presents a review of literature on social network theories, and their role in influencing ... The methodology employed in this study is elucidated in Chapter 3. The.
Mapping the social network architecture of rural communities: Gender and technological innovations in the semi-arid tropics of India Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy by R Padmaja Roll No: 05408704
Supervisors Prof D Parthasarathy Dr MCS Bantilan (External Supervisor)
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BOMBAY December 2012
DEDICATION To my Parents
I dedicate this thesis manuscript in memory of my father Late Mr Ravula Satyanarayana, whom I lost in 1984. What I am today is because of his principles that he taught me early in life. Even today he remains to be my source of inspiration. His divine blessings, I know are always with me.
My mother Mrs Ravula Suvarna is a pillar of strength and support to me. Her dedicated support, affection and unconditional belief in me that I can carve a niche for myself, drives me to reach greater heights with excellence.
I bow my head to you in respect, Nannagaru and Amma
ABSTRACT This is a sociological study focusing on social networks, to understand what formal and informal links and associations mean to the poor in rural communities in India, and how these links help them in improving themselves and their communities at large. Understanding when, why, and how social networks function best is important. Mixed methods approach for data collection and analysis is adopted in this study i.e., qualitative and quantitative approaches are used and is based on the experiences of men and women from two villages – Kanzara in Maharashtra state and Aurepalle in Andhra Pradesh - located in the heartland of semi-arid tropics (SAT) of India. These villages form a part of the larger longitudinal Village-level Studies (VLS) which the International Crops Research Institute for the SemiArid Tropics (ICRISAT) is undertaking since 1975.
A number of studies have acknowledged that technological change in the SAT is slow and less dynamic compared to the regions with better soils, water and irrigation facilities. The harsh environment of the SAT necessitates collective action as a coping mechanism to overcome the challenges of extreme weather events, and poor resource endowments to bring about significant economic changes.
An important conclusion from this study is that both the study villages exhibited good levels of social capital in terms of social networks inspite of differences in resource endowments between the villages. Differences apart, the non-availability of (or difficulty in obtaining) formal insurance, and, inadequate financial, agricultural information delivery and extension systems in the study villages has prompted the development of kinship networks in one village and self-help groups in another. The analysis also leads to the conclusion that compared to Kanzara, Aurepalle which is endowed with a diverse stock of social networks and civic associations is in a stronger position to deal with changes in the external environment, resolve conflicts, and take advantage of new opportunities.
From the documentation and mapping of network architectures in the two study locations it can be concluded that the rural communities demonstrate social connectedness to a large extent. The degree of social connectedness however varies across villages, across different interactions and transactions, and across groups and individuals. The density of the networks iv
also varies depending on the characteristics of the region as a result of which people develop interactions and relationships with other individuals, groups and organizations differently. In Aurepalle the economic transactions are more dense and reciprocal because of the profit making motivation of the individuals and the community, as a result of better access to information, knowledge and infrastructure. Formal networks are fostered and developed as they are treated as important for empowerment – economic as well as social in this village. In contrast, Kanzara - where caste plays an important role in the functioning of society and where the pathway of development is through intensification of agriculture - shows a high degree of networking in terms of socio-cultural and technological transactions. Another interesting finding is that while out migration has broken down the network structure to some extent (Kanzara), it has created new opportunities and linkages with the external environment in Aurepalle. From a broader development perspective, based on the findings from the study, I argue that policy interventions and government support must target areas where the linkages are weak or missing or lacking keeping in view the differences by gender and caste.
The thesis is organized as follows: Chapter 1 provides the introduction to the study. Chapter 2 presents a review of literature on social network theories, and their role in influencing adoption decisions. The methodology employed in this study is elucidated in Chapter 3. The profiles of the study locations are documented in Chapter 4. The analysis of the data focusing on relationships and transactions and thereby the mapping, documentation and establishing the network architecture of the rural communities is presented in chapter 5. Chapter 6 documents two case studies which are an outcome of the social networks – the role of kinship networks in the spread and rapid diffusion of a seed technology; and how participation in the formal Self Help Groups has empowered rural women.
Chapter 7
provides the discussion and synthesis based on the results from chapters 5 and 6. The conclusions and recommendation from the study are summed up in Chapter 8, followed by appendices and references cited.
Key words: social networks, technology adoption, diffusion, semi-arid tropics, gender, social structure, kinship, self-help groups
v
Contents
APPROVAL SHEET ......................................................................................................................................... II DECLARATION ............................................................................................................................................. III ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................... IV LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................................................ IX LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................................... X ABBREVIATION NOTATION AND NOMENCLATURE ..................................................................................... XIII GLOSSARY OF CROPS................................................................................................................................. XIV
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION - SETTING THE STAGE ....................................................................................... 1 1.1
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY ........................................................................................................................... 2
1.2
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM ........................................................................................................................ 10
1.3
AIM AND SCOPE: FOCUS ON AGRICULTURE TECHNOLOGY, GENDER AND SOCIAL NETWORKS ........................................ 14
1.4
SCHEMA OF PRESENTATION ........................................................................................................................... 17
1.5
SUMMING UP ............................................................................................................................................. 18
CHAPTER 2 – WHAT DOES THE LITERATURE TELL US ................................................................................... 19 SOCIAL NETWORKS, TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION AND GENDER: A REVIEW ..................................................... 19 2.1
DEFINITIONS AND FOUNDATIONS OF
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL NETWORKS .............................................................. 21
2.2
NETWORK FEATURES .................................................................................................................................... 32
2.3
DEFINING NETWORKS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO INDIAN SOCIAL STRUCTURE ........................................................ 35
2.4
ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS IN INFLUENCING DECISIONS IN GENERAL ...................................................................... 37
2.5
AGRICULTURE, AGRARIAN CHANGE
2.6
SOCIAL LEARNING, SOCIAL NETWORKS AND TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION...................................................................... 48
2.7
REVIEW OF METHODOLOGIES TO STUDY SOCIAL NETWORKS.................................................................................. 59
AND TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION IN INDIA ............................................................. 42
2.8 MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL NETWORK CONCEPT .............................................................................. 61 2.9
SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................. 62
CHAPTER 3: HOW I WENT ABOUT NETWORKING ........................................................................................ 65 METHODOLOGY FOR THE STUDY ................................................................................................................ 65 3.1 FRAMEWORK LINKING SOCIAL NETWORKS TO TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE...................................................................... 67 3.2 SELECTION OF STUDY LOCATIONS ........................................................................................................................ 70 3.3 SOURCES OF DATA AND DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUES .......................................................................................... 71
vi
3.4 QUALITY OF DATA COLLECTION .......................................................................................................................... 74 3.5 CODING AND VALIDATION OF DATA; DATABASE CONSTRUCTION ................................................................................ 75 3.6 ANALYTICAL TOOLS .......................................................................................................................................... 77 3.7 KEY CONCEPTS ................................................................................................................................................ 77 3.8 SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................................... 80 CHAPTER 4: PROFILE OF THE STUDY VILLAGES ............................................................................................ 81 4.1 CHARACTERIZING THE SEMI-ARID TROPICS ......................................................................................................... 82 4.2
REVIEW OF
THE REGION -
MAHBUBNAGAR
AND AKOLA DISTRICTS, INDIA
............................................................. 85
4.3 A BRIEF PROFILE OF VILLAGE KANZARA .............................................................................................................. 93 4.4 A BRIEF PROFILE OF VILLAGE AUREPALLE ............................................................................................................ 105 4.5 SUMMING UP ............................................................................................................................................... 116 CHAPTER 5: ESTABLISHING AND MAPPING THE SOCIAL NETWORK ARCHITECTURE OF THE RURAL COMMUNITIES IN TWO VILLAGES IN SEMI-ARID TROPICS OF INDIA ...........................................................119 5.1
PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS ........................................................................................................... 120
5.2
MAPPING THE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, TECHNOLOGICAL AND INFORMATION NETWORK ARCHITECTURE ........................... 132
5.3 HOUSEHOLD AND INDIVIDUAL LEVEL ANALYSIS OF THE NETWORKS ......................................................................... 149 ....................................................................................................................................................................... 159 5.4 UNDERSTANDING NETWORK ARCHITECTURE DIFFERENTIATED BY GENDER .............................................................. 160 5.5 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................................................ 168 CHAPTER 6: AN EXAMINATION OF THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL NETWORKS: ...................................................169 KINSHIP NETWORKS IN KANZARA AND SELF HELP GROUPS IN AUREPALLE .................................................169 6.1 KINSHIP NETWORKS IN THE SPREAD OF AN AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION IN KANZARA .................................................. 170 6.2 WOMEN’S SELF-HELP GROUPS IN AUREPALLE ..................................................................................................... 178 CHAPTER 7: A NEW WAY TO SEE - THE NETWORK LENS..............................................................................190 7.1 STUDYING WHOLE NETWORKS.......................................................................................................................... 191 7.2 SOCIAL NETWORK THEORY AS A STRUCTURAL APPROACH ....................................................................................... 193 7.3 EVOLUTION OF NETWORKS THROUGH MENTORING .............................................................................................. 195 7.4 DEPENDENCE RELATIONS AND DEPENDENCY NETWORKS ........................................................................................ 198 7.5 HOW GOVERNMENT POLICIES AFFECT THE FORMATION OF NETWORKS ..................................................................... 201 7.6 UNIQUENESS OF SEMI-ARID TROPICS
INFLUENCING FORMATION OF SOCIAL NETWORKS .............................................. 203
7.7 SOCIAL NETWORKS AND TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION ................................................................................................ 204 7.8 THE FOCUS ON GENDER - STRUCTURAL AS WELL AS EVERYDAY PRACTICE AND NETWORKING .......................................... 206 7.9 CASTE AND KINSHIP ....................................................................................................................................... 208 7.10
MIGRATION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS......................................................................................................... 211
vii
CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................................212 APPENDICES..............................................................................................................................................222 ....................................................................................................................................................................... 235 REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................237 PUBLICATIONS BY THE CANDIDATE ...........................................................................................................275 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................................278
viii
List of Tables Table No
Title
Page No
Table 2.1
A listing of theories using the network approach
28
Table 3.1
Total number of households interviewed for the study, 2008-09
72
Table 4.1
General description of the study regions and villages
91
Table 4.2
Demographic details, Kanzara, 2010
94
Table 4.3
Buildings and infrastructure, Kanzara, 2010
95
Table 4.4
Government welfare schemes in implementation, Kanzara, 2010
96
Table 4.5
General characteristics of the village Kanzara at two different
101
points of time – comparison Table 4.6
Details of Aurepalle and its two hamlet villages Nallavaripalle
107
and Turkalkunta, 2010 Table 4.7
Buildings and infrastructure, Aurepalle, 2010
108
Table 4.8
Government welfare schemes in implementation in Aurepalle,
109
2010 Table 4.9
General characteristics of the village Aurepalle at two different
113
points of time Table 5.1
Degree centrality measure for economic transactions, Kanzara.
135
Table 5.2
Number of transactions individuals in village Kanzara have with
152
a household from Jiremali caste Table 5.3
Sources of income of household A35 and its split-off households
165
Table 6.1
Agriculture technology related transactions of an innovator and
177
early adopter of ICP 8863, Kanzara
ix
List of Figures Figure No
Title
Page No
Figure 3.1.
Framework linking social networks to technological change
69
Figure 3.2
Conceptual framework linking livelihood assets, social capital
69
and social networks Figure 3.3
Framework linking theory on social capital and social networks,
75
and data collection Figure 4.1
Map of India showing the study villages against the backdrop of
86
LGP Figure 4.2
Trends in annual rainfall at Akola, 1971-2007
92
Figure 4.3
Trends in annual rainfall at Mahbubnagar, 1971-2007
92
Figure 4.4
Cropped area and irrigated area in Kanzara, 2009-10
95
Figure 4.5
A social map of Kanzara village
99
Figure 4.6
A resource map of Kanzara village
100
Figure 4.7
Cropping pattern in Kanzara, 1975-2009/10
104
Figure 4.8
Distribution of households by caste groups, 1985, 1989, 2007
104
Figure 4.9
Cropped area and irrigated area in Aurepalle, 2009-10
108
Figure 4.10
A social map of Aurepalle village
111
Figure 4.11
A resource map of Aurepalle village
112
Figure 4.12
Cropping pattern in Aurepalle, 1975-2009/10
115
Figure 5.1
Memberships in groups, 2004-05
121
Figure 5.2
Memberships of groups, 1954-2005, Kanzara
124
Figure 5.3
Memberships of groups, 1960-2005, Aurepalle
124
Figure 5.4
Membership in groups, by caste and gender, Kanzara, 2004-05
126
Figure 5.5
Degree of participation in groups, Aurepalle and Kanzara, 2004-
126
05 Figure 5.6
Network map for economic transactions at the household level,
136
Kanzara Figure 5.7
Degree centrality in economic transaction at the household level,
136
Kanzara Figure 5.8
Network map for economic transactions at the household level,
138
Aurepalle Figure 5.9
Degree centrality for economic transactions, Aurepalle x
138
Figure 5.10
Network architecture for socio-cultural-political transactions,
141
Kanzara Figure 5.11
Network map by closeness measure, Kanzara
141
. Figure No
Title
Page No
Figure 5.12
Network map by betweenness measure for socio-cultural transactions
142
Figure 5.13
Network map by for socio-cultural-political transactions in Aurepalle
142
Figure
Network map by degree centrality for socio-cultural transactions,
143
5.14
Aurepalle
Figure 5.15
Closeness measure and reciprocal ties for socio-cultural networks,
145
Aurepalle Figure 5.16
Degree centrality measure and reciprocal ties for socio-cultural
145
networks, Aurepalle Figure 5.17
Network architecture for technological transactions, Kanzara
147
Figure 5.18
Network map for technological transactions, Aurepalle
147
Figure 5.19
Network map showing all transactions by different members of the
121
household belonging to upper caste, Kanzara Figure 5.20
Network map of household E0146, Kanzara
154
Figure 5.21
Interactions of woman-headed household with other caste groups,
154
Kanzara Figure 5.22
Network map of a money lender, Aurepalle
157
Figure 5.23
The moneylender as an important node in other network, Aurepalle
157
Figure 5.24
Network map of the household of the sarpanch of village Aurepalle
159
Figure 5.25
Network map of a SC community household where the woman is the
159
head of the household, Aurepalle Figure 5.26
Network map of sample women for all transactions, Kanzara
160
Figure 5.27
Network map of sample men for all transactions, Kanzara
161
Figure 5.28
A network map of women involved in land and labor transactions in
162
Aurepalle Figure 5.29
A network map of men for the Goud community, Aurepalle
164
Figure 5.30
Total operated land of the household A35 and its split-off households,
164
1975-2009 xi
Figure 5.31
A network map of men from sample households, Aurepalle
167
Figure 5.32
A network map of women from sample households, Aurepalle
167
Figure 6.1
Area under different crops, Kanzara, 1975-2010
172
Figure 6.2
Network map of sample households who are adopting ICP 8863
176
variety of pigeonpea Figure 6.3
Process of obtaining credit by SHGs, Aurepalle
181
Figure 6.4
Network map of an empowered women, an outcome of participation
186
in SHG, Aurepalle Figure 6.5
Actors/groups who have the SHG leader in their network, Aurepalle
xii
187
Abbreviation Notation and Nomenclature
Bt
Bacillus thuringiensis
DWCRA
Development of Women and children in the Rural Areas
HYV
High Yielding Varieties
ICRISAT
International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
ICT
Information and Communication Technologies
LGP
Length of Growing Period
MNREGA
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
OBC
Other Backward Classes
SAT
Semi-Arid Tropics
SC
Scheduled Caste
SHG
Self-Help Group
SNA
Social Network Analysis
ST
Scheduled Tribe
T&V
Training and Visit
UC
Upper Caste
VLS
Village-level Studies
xiii
Glossary of Crops
Sorghum
Scientific name - Sorghum bicolor. Sorghum has been, for centuries, one of the most important staple foods for millions of poor rural people in the semiarid tropics of Asia and Africa. It grows in harsh environments where other crops do not grow well. It is also called as Jowar in Hindi.
Pigeonpea
Scientific name - Cajanus cajan. It is an important legume crop of rainfed agriculture in the semiarid tropics. In India, split pigeon peas (tur dal, arhar) is one of the most popular pulses, being an important source of protein in a mostly vegetarian diet
Pearl millet
Scientific name - Pennisetium glaucum. It is the most widely grown type of millet. Grown in Africa and the Indian subcontinent since prehistoric times. Pearl millet is well adapted to growing areas characterized by drought, low soil fertility, and high temperature. Because of its tolerance to difficult growing conditions, it can be grown in areas where other cereal crops, such as maize or wheat, would not survive. It is called as Bajra in Hindi.
Glossary of botanical and English names of certain crops BOTANICAL
ENGLISH
Oryza Sativa
Paddy
.Zeamays
Maize
Triticum spp
Wheat
Phaseolus Mungo
Green gram
Phascolus radiatus
Blackgram
Cicer arietinum
Chickpea
Dolichos lab lab
Field bean
Vigna Cating
Cowpea
Arachis hypogea
Groundnut
Ricinus Communis
Castor
Gyossium spp
Cotton
xiv
Chapter 1: Introduction - Setting the Stage
“Social network analysis is an interdisciplinary behavioral science specialty. It is grounded in the observation that social actors are interdependent and the links among them have important consequences for every individual. […] They provide individuals with opportunities and at the same time potential constraints on their behavior.” [Freeman, 2000, p.350]
I use the above quotation by Freeman as a way of introducing my thesis topic which focuses on social networks and mapping the network architecture of rural communities to understand what the formal and informal links and associations mean to the poor in the rural communities and how these links help the rural men and women in improving themselves and their communities at large. Social networks can be viewed as one form of asset as well as a resource which the poor people, especially rural women possess and have access to for their overall development and progress. This is a sociological study using a mixed method approach for data collection – qualitative and quantitative approaches - and is based on the experiences of men and women from two villages in India which are located in the semi-arid tropical environment, affected by the
vagaries of climate, policies and government support. Putting in a nutshell, this research focuses its inquiry on social structure and social networks and how these networks can foster rapid uptake of agricultural technology as well as understand how social networks can empower women living in these neglected and vulnerable regions.
1.1 Background to the study It is now widely recognized that the information revolution in India has given birth to new economies structured around flows of information and knowledge.
Similarly, social
networks have also grown stronger as forms of organization of human activity. A social network comprises a set of actors and a set of links between actors. The actors also called as nodes are often individuals, groups, organizations, or even socio-cultural entities, such as beliefs, knowledge, or areas of expertise and could also be related systems that may be interdependent. These interdependencies could be through sharing of resources (physical, financial, knowledge, etc), values, visions, and ideas; social contacts; kinship; conflict; financial exchanges; trade; joint membership in organizations; and group participation in events, among numerous other aspects of human relationships. This idea of the social network is becoming increasingly popular among both social anthropologists and sociologists as a way of understanding behavior, particularly in large scale complex but often less structured societies (Mitchell, 1974). Since the early 1970s, several social theorists have used the idea of social networks in their inquiry and studies and have also argued that it is fruitful to analyze the social world in terms of the links among these (multi-layered) entities. The links signify a relationship of some kind, and may be multi-valued.
The argument by Granovetter (2005) provides an added dimension to the usefulness of understanding social networks. His argument is that social structure, especially in the form of social networks affects economic outcomes like hiring labor (through the labor markets), prices, and diffusion of innovation, among others. A growing literature has started to show the importance of social networks in the economy, above all to explain labour mobility and the actual production of innovation. However, I focus here on the sociological contributions of social structure and social networks on the rural economy which is heavily dependent on agriculture. Social relationships in agricultural communities have traditionally been characterized by strong often lifelong ties through small, homogeneous local networks. Henri Mendras (1976) has described the tightly knit nature of what he termed the peasant ‘société 2
d’interconnaissance’ defined by its village inhabitants as ‘here everybody knows everybody else’. As farming is reshaped by changes in the global agricultural system, new forms of relationships for both conventional and alternative farmers are emerging which may involve unfamiliar players, innovative business models and distant geographies. An important implication of this change is that relational skills for interacting effectively in networks have become critical to farm business success (Flora et al. 2001).
I begin with a brief discussion on social structure and building on this dialogue, I then deliberate on the concept of social networks in analyzing social structure. Social structure is one of the central concepts in sociological analysis and is at the core of many of the influential theories within the field of sociology. German sociologist, Georg Simmel, pioneered the concept of social structure by studying structure as an abstract concept. Some of the eminent sociologists who have developed conceptions of social structure include Bierstedt, Blau, Bottomore, Coleman, Coser, Durkheim, Goode, Homans, Lenski, LeviStrauss, Lipset, Marx, Merton, Nadel, Parsons, Radcliffe-Brown, Wallace, Weber and many others. They have developed conceptions of social structure in their attempts to provide explanatory frameworks that encompass both human behavior and institutional persistence and change. Then came the concept of "social stratification" which refers to the idea that society is separated into different strata, according to social distinctions such as a race, class and gender. Using this definition, family, religion, law, economy and class are all examples of social structures. Alongside this concept, there are also existing different views or opinions regarding the formation or development of social structure. The first viewpoint is whether social structure is naturally developed or socially constructed. Evidence from the literature reveals that social structure is naturally developed, caused by larger system needs, such as the need for labour, or by conflicts between groups, or among elites and masses. However, there is a contradictory belief that this structuring is not always as a result of natural processes, but is socially constructed. For example, it may be created by the power of elites who seek to retain their power, or by economic systems that place emphasis upon competition or cooperation. Another school of thought articulates that social structure can be divided into microstructure and macrostructure. Microstructure is the pattern of relations between most basic elements of social life, that cannot be further divided and have no social structure of their own (for example, pattern of relations between individuals in a group composed of individuals - where individuals have no social structure, or a structure of organizations as a pattern of relations between social positions or social roles, where those positions and roles 3
have no structure by themselves). Macrostructure, on the other hand, is like a 'second level' structure, a pattern of relations between objects that have their own structure (for example, a political social structure between political parties, as political parties have their own social structure). A third opinion that is articulated in the new world encyclopedia is that social structure/social system can also be viewed as a structure composed of different systems - the economic system, law system, political system, cultural system, among others (Srinivas and Beteille, 1974, http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Social_structure)
As is well known and documented, sociology is all about studying social structure, emphasizing the social constraints on the actions of people. There is another perspective which stresses on agency of the actors, which helps overcome constraints. This perspective goes well with my arguments on the dynamics of social networks and how participation in networks empowers (or disempowers) actors in their everyday life. Sewell Jr (1992) attempts to develop a theory of structure which restores human agency as well as brings in not only culture into structure but also the dynamic element of change thereby moving away from stability. Sewell Jr (1992) argues that structures comprise of mutually sustaining cultural schemas as well as sets of resources that may empower and or constrain social action. Likewise, this action may also enable production of some sets of resources. The empowerment of the agents by the structures is cyclical - the knowledge of cultural schemas enables them to mobilize resources and the access to resources enables them to enact schemas. To put it simply, structure is created from the character and distribution of resources in everyday life. He further argues that structure is dynamic and is continually evolving from a process of social interaction. Contributing to the debate of structure, culture and agency, Hays (1994) emphasizes that structures are the creation of human beings and are the very basis of human power and self-understanding, which is also articulated by Durkheim (1964) and Giddens (1992, 1984). A good example to support the above point is the system of gender stratification. This system not only gives men and women a sense of identity and a position in society but also puts constraints on them to act in certain ways (Hays, 1994). Based on the arguments and debate, Hays (1994) raises some relevant questions on the specification of the characteristics of the cultural and relational structures, how they operate and the context in which they operate as well as the resilience of their layers of patterning. The attention by sociologists should be on these cultural and structural processes through which transformative agency occurs, even by those with less powerful positions in the systems of social relations. 4
While sociology views the world as consisting of asymmetric ties bound in hierarchical structures leading to the categorization of the units based on the structural relations between the units, network analysis on the other hand, studies social structure through an analysis of the pattern of ties linking its members. A theory based on the concept of a social structure built on dynamic networks breaks with the two reductionist metaphors on which sociology was based historically: the mechanical view of society as a machine made up of institutions and organizations; and the organist view of society as a body, integrated with organs with specific bodily functions. If we need a new metaphor, the sociology of the network society would be built on the self-generating processes (discovered by molecular biology as the way living cells evolve) that develop through their interaction in a network of networks, within their own structure and with their environment. Interactive networks are the components of social structure, as well as the agencies of social change.
In my conceptualization of this study, I appeal to the fairly comprehensive treatment of the different approaches to social structure by Peter Blau (1975). Blau identifies three major approaches to social structure: (i) social structure as a configuration of social relations and positions, (ii) social structure as the substratum that underlines all of the social life and history, and (iii) social structure as a “multidimensional space of the differentiated social positions of the people in a society or other collectivity.” His focus is on the social structure as a system of social relations. He refers to it as a social system which deals with the very structure of the relations namely how individuals/groups/organizations are organized in a pattern of relationships. He opines that social structure does not concern itself with people/individuals forming the society or their organizations, neither does it study who are the people/organization forming it nor the ultimate goal of their relationships. In fact, he places greater emphasis on the pattern of relationships between individuals or groups or organizations.
At this point I would also like to mention the contributions of two eminent sociologists namely Radcliffe-Brown and Anthony Giddens on the analysis of social structure which is in line with my articulation of social structure and social networks. Radcliffe-Brown specialized in the study of kinship and marriage concentrating on the classificatory kinship terminology and focused his work on the primitive societies. He gave the concept of social structure a central place in his approach and connected it to the concept of function. To RadcliffeBrown, social structure is not an abstraction but empirical reality. It helps us to see the entire 5
web of social relationships in a systematic way and thus gain insight into the way society works and remains integrated. Anthony Giddens defines structuration as the structuring of social relations across time and space, in virtue of the duality of structure. He specifies that structure and agency cannot be separated; and that they are connected to one another in what Giddens has termed the ‘duality of structure’. Human actors are the elements that enable creation of our society's structure by means of invented values, norms or are reinforced through social acceptance. Giddens describes structure in terms of what he refers to as modalities - as a set of rules and resources that engages human action. He explains that rules restrict actions but the resources facilitated it. Giddens’s approach, essentially, to social action is that of praxis, regular patterns of enacted conduct by active actors who interact with each other in situations in habitual, reflexive, reflective, and more conscious ways. I will elaborate more on these two approaches to social structure – the structural-functional approach by Radcliffe and the Structuration theory by Giddens and how it has been used in the context of social networks in Chapter 2.
Having said all the above, I recapitulate that the power of social network theory stems from its difference from traditional sociological studies, which assume that it is the attributes of individual actors -- whether they are friendly or unfriendly, smart or dumb, etc. -- that matter. Social network theory on the other hand produces an alternate view, where the attributes of individuals are less important and their relationships and ties with other actors within the network are more important. This approach has turned out to be useful for explaining many real-world phenomena, but leaves less room for individual agency, the ability for individuals to influence their success; so much of it rests within the structure of their network.
To date, however, as discerned from the literature, we are still far from being able to understand and design ways that can harness the full potential of social networks. Understanding when, why, and how social networks function best is important. It is here that social network analysis plays an important role. Social network analysis (SNA), is also referred to as ‘structural analysis’, is a broad strategy for investigating social structures. The traditional individualistic social theory and data analysis considers individual actors making choices without taking the behaviour of others into consideration. This individualistic approach ignores the social and economic context of the actor. In SNA, however, the relationships between actors become the first priority, and individual properties are only secondary. SNA also provides a formal, conceptual means for analyzing the social world, but 6
it is important that concepts are defined in a precise and consistent way and are grounded in social phenomena. The social world involves multiple types of entities, including people, groups, organizations, cultural symbols, beliefs, and geographical locations. The most direct way to study a social structure is to analyze the patterns of ties linking its members. Network analysis has developed independently from other structural approaches in the social sciences, although it shares their general affinity for interpretation in terms of underlying deep structures (Mullins, 1973; Parret, 1976). Therefore the network analysis focuses on patterns of relations between actors – both relations and actors can be defined in many ways, depending on the substantive area of inquiry. Social networks perspective can be employed to analyze any kind of relational data, without any reference to the attributes of an individual unit. As expressed by Wasserman and Faust [1994; pp.8-9], network analysis could be useful to verify the existence of a core-periphery structure in the world economic system. SNA is based on an assumption of the importance of relationships among interacting units and the network perspective encompasses theories, models, and applications that are expressed in terms of relational concepts or processes.
However, there are complementarities in the analysis of the social networks and social structure. The social network theory analyzes patterns of interactions among actors (or “nodes” as they are called) of various kinds – actors could be individuals, organizations or groups of people. The basic premise underlying this theory is that social structure matters as it determines the pattern of interactions and relationships among individuals in a social group. And this is why I appeal to the social network theory to study how the patterning of relationships around a person, a group, or organization affects beliefs, behaviors and outcomes, and why this is important and relevant in understanding social structure. Summarizing from the literature, alongside the use of relational concepts in this analysis, SNA also emphasizes that:
Actors and their actions are viewed as interdependent rather than independent, autonomous units
Relational ties (linkages) between actors are channels for transfer or "flow" of resources (either material or nonmaterial)
Network models focusing on individuals view the network structural environment as providing opportunities for or constraints on individual action
Network models conceptualize structure (social, economic, political, and so forth) as lasting patterns of relations among actors 7
It is rightly said that India lives in rural villages where agriculture continues to be the dominant livelihood option, provides the leading source of employment and contributes large fractions of national income. As GS Bhalla (1985) points out, the policy makers adopted a twofold strategy for regenerating agriculture immediately after independence – a. implementation of land reforms to remove institutional bottlenecks and b. to undertake massive investment in irrigation and other infrastructure in order to update the existing agricultural technology. The unsuccessful implementation of the land reforms was in a stage where the agrarian structure was still characterized by feudal dominance. Agrarian structure of a country/region, as is well known, is the historically evolved compound of laws, customs, institutions, rural power configurations and a host of other factors that shape the relations of production and govern the distribution of agricultural net product among various groups/classes involved in and dependent on agriculture. There have been a lot of debates by Indian scholars (like Bhalla, Sen etc) on the agrarian structure and the historical changes it underwent from the pre-independence era to the period of structural transformations. It has to deal not only with the class structure but also the caste structure which even today is quite rigid in the rural areas. The changing agrarian structure, its complexities and the impasse’ it has reached has been researched, reviewed and written about by many researchers and thinkers. This complexity makes it difficult, if not impossible, to devise a suitable single empirical variable to represent the various facets of agrarian structure (HS Shergill, 1989).
Another major breakthrough was the introduction of new technology through the green revolution. Again, even though there have been many debates on the success and failure of the green revolution, it is widely accepted that the green revolution did help in increasing agricultural productivity and thereby food security improved as well as reduction on poverty to some extent. Therefore it is very clear that increasing agricultural productivity is critical to economic growth and development.
There are several studies which establish the link between adoption of new agricultural technologies and poverty reduction in the developing world including India (See Hazell and Kolavalli S, 1999 for a good review on this). Alongside this finding is also the realization that agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly and some aspects of the adoption process remain poorly understood. There is one strand of literature that focuses on the decision making process by the farmers in adopting a technology (Evenson and Gollin, 2003; Smale 1995). There is another strand of literature that focuses on the learning and social networks 8
involved in technology adoption. A number of studies analyze how social learning may lead a farmer’s initial decision to adopt a new technology and how this decision is related to the decisions of others in his or her social network. A succinct review of this literature is presented by Doss CR (2006:pg: 2009) which include the works of Bandiera and Rasul (2002), Besley and Case (1993), Conley and Udry (2000), Foster and Rosenzweig (1995), Munshi (2004) among others. These are some examples of studies that help us look at characteristics beyond the farm, plot and nature of technologies, to understand the adoption process through knowledge sharing and spread of information.
Similarly studies by
Huijboom (2007), Sanginga et.al (2004, 2007a, b) concur that social capital in the form of social networks has a positive impact on the adoption and use of improved agricultural technologies.
Feminist theory and scholarship has also produced a large body of work pertaining to distinctly female experiences, perceptions, and production of knowledge. Building upon the feminist theories (the work of Bordo 1986; Dias and Blecha 2007; Haraway 1988; Mohanty 1984), researchers have recognized the need to explore the specific roles, responsibilities, and knowledge of women in developing countries and to value their unique perspectives. Researchers have focused a great deal of attention on explaining the unequal returns to women in
terms of access to resource and knowledge, the role of social networks in
information flows, especially the differential access to information and knowledge (Mcdonal, Lin and AO, 2009; Burt 1992) . Although returns by men and women may be identical, the responsiveness of household welfare to women’s social capital in the form of social networks is higher (Maluccio et al., 2003, Meinzen-Dick and Zwarteveen, 2003). The literature is abundant with the findings that rural women usually have less access than men to information and new technologies (FAO, 1997, Greenberg and Okani, 2001, Mugniesyah, 2002, Hang Thi and Van An, 2006, Katungi et al, 2006) and that they suffer from limited access to resources, markets, training, and decision-making opportunities. As a result, women seek formal and informal networks to cope with the shocks and to make sure that their views are represented, particularly if formal rules limit their participation (Meinzen-Dick and Zwarteveen, 2003). Their lack of access to information and formal networks deprives them of their potential capacity to make informed decisions in effectively managing their farms and selling their farm products (Tatlonghari et al, 2012).
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In particular, researchers have identified social networks as critical components in empowering women because of the multiple roles that women play within communities (Flora, 2001). Social networks can facilitate the increase in women’s bargaining power within and outside of the household, thereby increasing their access to resources and opportunities. This process is directly related to increases in productivity, income generation, food security, and quality of life factors such as health, nutrition, and education for households in general (World Bank, 2008).
1.2 Statement of the problem My research interest is to study agricultural technology uptake, diffusion and innovation in the risky, harsh environments of the Semi-Arid Tropics (SAT) in India and how technology affects rural men and women However, as Ketema (2008) points out, new ideas and interventions as well as doing things differently (the agricultural management practices) do not necessarily happen all at once, but often spread gradually. One such avenue through which this spread occurs is through social networks. Studies have also shown that the heart of the diffusion process consists of interpersonal network exchanges between those individuals who have already adopted an innovation and those who are then influenced to do so (Rogers, 1995). It is my aim to show that different structure of social networks – i.e., different positions in terms of achieving common goals and sustaining and developing norms and networks for collective action - is helpful for successful uptake of socio-economic processes such as technology adoption. This is clearly articulated by Parthasarathy and Chopde (2000) who state that the importance of understanding formal and informal organizations and their contribution to the construction of social capital is necessary to perceive how people mobilize and acquire a wide range of assets and gain access to decision making processes, technologies, resources and markets, and as well as benefit from them. The SAT is characterized by high temperatures (more than 180C), poor soil quality, uneven, unpredictable rainfall on which agricultural production largely depends, high rates of poverty as well as high population pressure, and is marginalized in terms of policy support and infrastructure development (Walker and Ryan, 1990). Agriculture is the dominant livelihood option of the men and women inhabiting the SAT. It has also been observed by researchers that agriculture is risky in the SAT (Rao et al 2004). Walker and Ryan (1990) further show
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that in the SAT where majority (about 60%) of the households have operational land-holding smaller than two hectares, the land use patterns reflects a high and increasing population density that is a driving force towards agricultural intensification leading to further problems of soil fertility. The family structure in the SAT tended to be joint or extended family with parents living with the married son (s) and about half are nuclear families. It is now observed that many of the joint families have now split into nuclear households. The caste hierarchy is dynamic in these regions but is seen to be gradually eroding. There is an educational transition happening in the SAT with parents sending their children to schools and for higher education. The heterogeneity of the soils and the unstable production environment offer comparatively limited potential for agricultural growth and poses difficult problems for an agricultural – based strategy of rural development opine these two authors. Crops like coarse cereals, pulses, oilseeds and cotton dominate the SAT landscape but due to the recent technological innovations there is an emergence of diversification into high value crops and commodities like fruits and vegetables in some parts of the SAT especially the wetter SAT where there is availability of irrigation. Having said all this, one of the key drivers of change in these regions is through agricultural modernization i.e., using new improved agricultural technology to improve the livelihoods of the poor.
For a long time researchers and practitioners have argued that a simple Schumpeterian understanding of market forces, with the assumption that a superior technology will be chosen by the market, lacks an understanding of the influence of the socio-institutional environment upon the innovation (Choh 1999; Pinch 1988). This was addressed in some ways by Rogers’ (1995) who proposed the diffusion of innovation theory. As the name suggests, the main interest of this theory was on diffusion of technology but it adopted a micro level perspective and also focused on socio-cultural aspects. Even to date, this theory remains to be one of the pioneering theories on the diffusion of innovations. Though it considered some socio-cultural aspects in their understanding of technology diffusion, this theory also failed to account for influences brought in from an external environment namely it excluded network externalities that are crucial in understanding diffusion of technology. It should also be remembered that most of the innovation research focused on the industry. It is only from the mid 1990s that innovation in agricultural research started to take concrete shape and there have been several case studies and publications to demonstrate the
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importance of innovation in agricultural research and models of technology transfer and innovations.
As explained in the previous section, there is also a rich body of literature showing evidences of development economists studying agricultural technology diffusion. The determinants for the rate of diffusion, determinants of technology adoption as well as potential barriers to technology adoption have been identified through these and a host of other studies (Feder, Just and Zilberman 1985, Foster and Rosenzweig 1995, Foster and Rosenzweig 2010). While the results conclude that the specific determinants of technology adoption depend upon the setting and the technology type, common factors identified in the theoretical and empirical literature include education, wealth, tastes, risk preferences, complementary inputs and access to information and learning.
Of recent interest in these considerations is the importance of information to technology diffusion. It is widely recognized that the introduction of a new technology into an agricultural community like the SAT, be it a new crop or process, the unfamiliarity of the farmers with the new technology is an obvious barrier to diffusion. This acknowledgement of the importance of information to agricultural technology diffusion, has led to a search and an identification of opportunities that increases the flow of information about the new technology to farmers and thereby speeds up the rate of technology adoption. The deeply unequal agrarian economy like India, where majority of the farmers and farm labor are illiterate, especially women, have small or marginal operational land holdings, and cultural norms may inhibit free and easy access to adequate information about new innovations and knowledge. The rapid spread of mobile phone coverage in rural India as well provides a unique opportunity to facilitate technological adoption via ICT-based agricultural extension programs. However, it is to be remembered that farmers have different types of information needs during each stage of crop production, ranging from weather forecasts, pest attacks, inputs (seeds and fertilizer), improved cultivation practices, pest and disease management and prices, which may not always be available through the mobile phone. Information asymmetries are often an important constraint to adoption in developing countries (Aker, 2010).
Here, I would like to talk about the agricultural extension system as a channel to provide information to the rural people about a new intervention which could be in the form of a new 12
seed variety, a management practice, information about a new policy to be enforced etc. Since the 1960s, agricultural extension has been put forth as a means of reducing the information asymmetries related to agricultural technology adoption in both developed and developing countries. Agricultural extension models can take several forms - Training and Visit (T&V), Farmer Field Schools (FFS) and fee-for-service. T&V was promoted by the World Bank and applied in more than 70 countries including India between 1975 and 1995. In the T&V approach, specialists and field staff provide technical information and village visits to selected communities. In many cases the field agents train and work directly with “contact farmers”, or farmers who have successfully adopted new technologies and are able to train others. In most cases these ‘contact farmers’ were the male farmers and women were totally excluded from this process. This system of agricultural extension failed miserably in India for several reasons. Let me not forget about the role of ICT in information spread. ICT has the potential for information spread which is fast and timely. But given the level of information infrastructure in rural India and more so in the SAT, as well as literacy levels of men and women, ICT at this stage cannot be utilized and exploited fully for enhancing technology adoption through spread of technology. As mentioned earlier, radios and mobile telephones do play some role in this but it is not as widespread yet.
In the absence of an extension system as well mediation through ICT as a source of information provider, one such mechanism that has been identified in the literature as increasing the availability of information to farmers and thereby speeding up the adoption process is social networks. Social networks are people-to-people networks along which information flows between people within the network. Given the level of information infrastructure in the SAT, the associated gender bias and barriers that exist in the access to these new information technologies, the importance of social networks as an information source is heightened. In the agricultural context, the improvements in skill and reduction in perceived uncertainty of a new technology that comes about from information gleaned from social networks can be a major catalyst for adoption of a new technology.
As a way of closing my argument, I would also like to add that social networks operate and or exist in a social structure. Different kinds of networks are developed, fostered and created due to interactions of different nature – land and labor interactions, political interactions, economic interactions among others along with the technology-related interactions. Hence in my research which I discuss in this thesis, I am using a gender lens and investigating 13
technology diffusion and adoption in the SAT region by studying different kinds of social networks in an integrated way.
1.3 Aim and scope: focus on agriculture technology, gender and social networks One of the ways to reduce poverty in agrarian societies is to promote new agricultural practices and technologies. In developing countries like India, large scale adoption of new technologies by both men and women is essential in order to raise the agricultural output and productivity on a sustainable and equitable basis.
Similarly, in the realm of rural and
agricultural development, Parthasarathy and Chopde (2000) emphasize the importance of social capital and collective action for resource management (of common pool resources, watersheds, but also integrated pest management, etc.) and for technology uptake processes. It is also hypothesized that ensuring women equal access to appropriate technologies and other input and support systems increases women’s productivity and welfare. With the emergence of the dual phenomenon of feminization of agriculture and feminization of poverty it is imperative to recognize the realized as well as potential contribution of both men and women farmers and understand their decision processes and constraints. Understanding and acknowledging the role of social capital through social networks in the nexus of technology exchange and spread is therefore essential for large scale diffusion of technologies.
There is a vast body of literature that have considered gender issues in agricultural production and technology adoption and these are receiving importance and are being investigated with greater rigor, encompassing a multi-dimensional perspective. In India also, there a number of studies and research reports which have investigated the technology adoption process especially for agricultural technology, impacts of the green revolution, differential impacts of technology on men and women and finally welfare outcomes (Agarwal b 1998, Padmaja et al 2006, Kolli and Bantilan 1997, Das, Kabeer N 2001, and Kelkar G (2009) among others. Most show mixed evidence regarding the different roles men and women play in technology adoption and also the importance of communication and extension services available to men and women farmers in India. This is not an easy task, as poor and marginalized people are often difficult to reach. Rural areas in India have poor communication between government, 14
institutions and farmers, and hence display a low uptake of new technologies. Systems to communicate new practices and ideas are often ineffective in remote areas. In these areas, it is often informal connections between farmers and the outside world that help to promote technological change. These include relations and friends within a village, and contacts in other villages and urban areas. It is therefore important to research on the social networks in rural poor areas and make better use of the existing communication networks used by the poor.
The approach of Blau which considered social positions of the people as one of the core concepts of studying social structure inspired me to adopted the approach of looking at relationships and interactions by men and women in the rural setting. My research interests on gender related issues in the context of agriculture and rural development are a reflection of my belief that these are essential to achieve the duals goals of ‘equity’ and ‘efficiency’ in development and sharing of technology including knowledge.
I was involved in case studies by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) on Groundnut Production Technology (GPT)
uptake which
systematically documented the process by which farmers – both men and women - as well as the whole community became empowered through the build-up of social capital which facilitated access to resources, information and technology (Bantilan and Padmaja, 2008). The research results revealed that the build-up of social capital played an important role in influencing impacts from the technology because of the ways in which social networks and social relationships facilitated technology dissemination. Continuing with the Monitoring and Evaluation exercise, I undertook gender-based social analysis, which identified the dynamic interplay between individuals within households and institutions, the evolving relationships and access, allocation and control of resources.
The differing social networks and
correspondingly different levels of access to information, led to men and women experiencing different consequences. Networks facilitated communication, coordination, and the provision of information/knowledge regarding agricultural production, income generation, skill enhancement and food security of the family. The study highlighted that social networks played a crucial mediating role in the process of technology uptake.
Appealing to the concept of social capital as networks and relationships, I propose to further research on the types of social networks that marginalized groups associate with, the 15
networks that the powerful groups have access to, and the relationship between the two groups. Establishing and mapping the network architecture (including networks developed either through formal organizations, kinship groups, neighborhoods networks, work groups, self-help groups, or informal interactions) will help me identify the focal nodes or the actors who can be viable entry points of an intervention. I also look into the role of social networks and power relations in the village in technology adoption and diffusion.
My study is in two villages in the Semi-arid Tropical (SAT) region of India where agricultural technology adoption is lower, social indicators are poor, along with higher poverty levels. Coupled with this is the weak and limited agricultural extension system thereby further narrowing down the avenues for information and communication flows. Hence the importance of networks for technology diffusion is higher in this region. To get a more holistic understanding on this process I also look at the socio-cultural-institutional and policy environment which may affect adoption decisions. I go a step further in understanding the role of social learning leading to a farmer’s initial decision to adopt a new technology by looking at how this decision is related to the decisions of others in his or her social network. This is where the analysis of social networks becomes important. It is also important to note that networks affect individuals and households differently depending on gender, class, kinship, political power etc. Hence analyzing the social networks by gender, class, caste also becomes imperative.
The major objectives of my study from a sociological perspective are: 1. to establish and map the network architectures of men and women in the study area for economic, socio-cultural-political and technological transactions 2. to determine the role of these networks and their gender implication in the diffusion of a seed technology among the members of the community; and 3. to understand the outcome or the effect of the social networks in empowering women in the study area
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I want to effectively connect my research interest in the marginalized SAT context with the issue of harnessing social capital and social networks as a way of empowering rural communities. Some of the broad research questions include: 1. What dynamics are observed in rural semi-arid tropics setting that warrants the relevance and critical influence of collective action and social network? 2. What may be the role of risk and uncertainty in farm-household behaviour and relationships in the SAT relative to more favourably endowed areas? 3. In the constrained bio-physical endowment of the SAT, do relationships and connections (group and collective) emerge through the evolution of effective social networks?
These are some of the issues that I would like to analyze in this dissertation.
1.4 Schema of presentation The thesis is organized as follows: Chapter 1 – this chapter provides the introduction to the study. Chapter 2 presents a review of literature on social network theories, and their role in influencing adoption decisions, a review of methodology, and of the region where this study is situated. The methodology employed in this study which allows for innovative quantitative and qualitative analysis of social networks to capture the village dynamics in adopting to new interventions, responding and adapting to changing social, economic, technological, policy environment and risks is elucidated in Chapter 3. The profiles of the study locations including their socio-economic, cultural characteristics as well as the bio-physical characteristics are documented in Chapter 4.
The analysis of the data focusing on
relationships and transactions and thereby the mapping, documentation and establishing the network architecture of the rural communities is presented in chapter 5. Chapter 6 documents two case studies which are an outcome of the social networks – the role of kinship networks in the spread and rapid diffusion of a seed technology; and how participation in the formal Self Help Groups has empowered rural women. Chapter 7 provides the discussion and synthesis based on the results from chapters 5 and 6. The conclusions and recommendation from the study are summed up in Chapter 8. This is followed by the references cited in this thesis and the appendices.
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1.5 Summing up The needs of different populations (whether defined by gender, age, caste or class) in areas such as agriculture, employment, and education are not exactly the same, and policy interventions developed to meet these needs are most effective when they are sensitive to, and incorporate, the values and aspirations of a target population. This requires that policy be based on an accurate understanding of the ways in which the socio- cultural characteristics of a particular population influence the relationships that its members have with other members, fields or domains within the wider society. The study of social networks and the mapping of network architecture of the rural communities are important since it helps us to better understand how and why we interact with each other, as well as how technology can alter this interaction.
Social network analysis has emerged as a set of methods for the analysis of social structures, methods which are specifically geared towards an investigation of the relational aspects of these structures. The unit of analysis in network analysis is not just the individual, but an entity consisting of a collection of individuals and the linkages among them - dyads (two actors and their ties), triads (three actors and their ties), or larger systems (subgroups of individuals) or entire networks.
Through network analysis, I attempt to describe these
patterns and use their descriptions to learn how network structures assist/constrain social behavior and social change. These descriptions are based on the social network concept of ties linking nodes in a social system - ties that connect persons, groups, organizations, or clusters of ties. The emphasis is on studying the structural properties of networks that affect behavior beyond the effects of normative prescriptions, personal attributes, and dyadic relationships. The focus is on studying how the patterns of ties in a network provide significant opportunities and constraints because they affect access of people and institutions to such resources as information, wealth, and power.
To gain a better understanding of the concept of social networks, a review of literature focusing on concepts, theories and methods of social network analysis is presented in the next chapter.
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Chapter 2 – What does the literature tell us Social networks, technology adoption and gender: A Review Village communities are not homogeneous entities but a combination of complex networks of social relationships. Many factors such as ethnicity, caste, gender, socio-economic status, and power relations determine one’s access to information and resources. An inadequate understanding of local social networks, norms, and power relations by researchers and development practitioners’ may lead to formulation of policy recommendations not favoring the local needs. This may further the interests of better-off farmers and marginalize the poor. From the discussion in Chapter 1, it is evident that in the harsh environment of the SAT, which also experiences a bias in terms of investments, technological innovations, policies and government support, social networks may be one form of institutions which can help rural men and women help themselves through norms of trust, reciprocity and sharing of resources and knowledge.
It is also clear that the most direct way to study a social structure is to analyze the patterns of ties linking its members, searching for network patterns beneath the often complex surface of social systems. It is also well established that network analysis has developed independently from other structural approaches in the social sciences, although it shares their general affinity for interpretation in terms of underlying deep structures (Mullins, 1973; Parret, 1976). Treating social systems as networks of dependency relationships resulting from the 19
differential possession of scarce resources at the nodes, network analysis looks at the structured allocation of these resources at the ties.
Agriculture in India has seen profound changes during the last five and a half decades. Indian agriculture started making large investments in irrigation, followed by introduction of highyielding varieties especially for wheat and paddy paving the way for technological growth. However, these technological changes and investments were in the more favourable regions like the Indo-gangetic plains. The trickle down effect of these technological changes to the SAT was slow and in some cases it did not happen at all.
Walker and Ryan (1990)
summarize that technological change in the SAT has been slow. The crops grown in the SAT were mostly subsistence crops like sorghum, pearlmillet, fingermillet, and pulses, and these did not receive either the attention of the researchers or the policy makers. Availability of water is a major constraint in these regions. Even though the SAT region is now experiencing technological changes through the introduction of downy mildew resistant pearlmillet, short duration chickpeas and pigeonpeas, drought resistant groundnuts, wilt resistant cultivars, to name a few, the policy and investment bias still exists. In a nutshell it can be said that the technological change in the SAT is slow and less dynamic compared to the regions with better soils, water and irrigation facilities.
Correspondingly, the literature on adoption of agricultural technologies in the SAT is also limited. Most of the adoption studies in the SAT focused on the bio-physical constraints to adoption, the potential of the technological innovations and to some extent the capacities of the farmers to adopt a new technology be it a seed technology or natural resource management practice. Gender issues in technology uptake were not the prime focus of the researchers. Similarly, literature on social networks as form of institutional arrangements, particularly in SAT agriculture is very scanty. New technology affects men and women differently, the uptake process by men and women is also different, the access to technology is different by gender and lastly the ability of men and women to access social networks – formal and informal – for technological uptake is also different. These differences have to be understood in a holistic manner and hence the need to link and study gender issues, technology adoption and social networks is important and critical.
This chapter reviews literature on the key concepts underlying the study with a view to establishing gaps in the knowledge that necessitate the undertaking of this research. Based 20
on the review, an exploration of how social networks function either as assets for men, women and households or constrain access to knowledge and resources in the rural areas and influence access to information and benefits from research and development is conceptualized.
2.1 Definitions and foundations of the concept of social networks There can be no discussion on social networks without discussing social capital. Social capital in the form of social networks has gained more attention in rural development theory as well as empirical research in the recent past . It is also increasingly being recognized that social networks are the structural components of social capital. Hence any discussion on social networks is not complete without discussion of the concept of social capital. Hence I start my review of literature defining social capital in relation to social structure and as a network.
2.1.1 Defining social capital in relation to social structure and as a network Social capital is a concept with a variety of inter-related definitions, based on the value of social networks. While various aspects of the concept have been approached by all social science fields, the modern usage of the term can be traced to sociologist Jane Jacobs in the 1960s. She did not explicitly define a term social capital but used it in an article with a reference to the value of networks. The term was little used even in sociology until it was adopted by Pierre Bourdieu in 1972 (though clear formulation in his work can be traced to 1984), and subsequently picked up initially by James Coleman and then others.
The literature also looks at social capital as the framework that supports the process of learning through interaction, and requires the formation of networking paths that are both horizontal (across agencies and sectors) and vertical (agencies to communities to individuals). It is also hypothesized that the quality of the social processes and relationships within which learning interactions take place is influential on the quality of the learning outcomes in collaborative approaches. This suggests that social capital plays an important role in fostering 21
the social networks and information exchange needed to achieve collective action - and sustaining a social and institutional environment that is ready to adapt and change.
The range of different definitions and the inclusive character of many of them (for example Bowles and Gintis, 2002; Knack and Keefer, 1997; Woolcock, 1998) have led to severe critique of the concept of social capital (Streeten, 2002; Castle, 1998; Arrow, 1999). However, the differences and disagreements are a good measure of the intellectual excitement of the current social capital literature (Durlauf 2002b; Robison et al.2002). The critique on the broad definition of social capital has resulted in referring to the term more specifically to mean associational life and social networks rather than to social norms as such (Foley and Edwards, 1999). For example, Dasgupta (2005), Paldam (2000), Sobel (2002) and Stiglitz(1999) maintain that social capital may be thought of as a collection of social networks.
However, the three theorists most frequently cited for their contributions to the development and use of the concept of social capital are Bourdieu (1986), Coleman (1990), and Putnam (1993). The most broadest definition of social capital has been by Coleman (1999), who defines it not as a single entity but as a variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structures, and they facilitate certain actions of individuals who are within the structure through relationships of trust, reciprocity and exchanges. Bourdieu (1986) on the other hand defines social capital as the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized.
While all three identify social capital with social structure, they do so differently, in ways that reflect the theoretical underpinnings of their respective approaches and the aspects of social reality they seek to understand. I summarize the differences between the theoretical bases of Bourdieu, Coleman, and Putnam as follows. According to Bourdieu, social capital is a resource used by people to support their strategies for maintaining and changing their positions within hierarchical social structures. He uses the concept within a praxis-based approach in which social practice is considered to be generated through a process involving the interaction of structure and agency. The concept of capital is central to Bourdieu’s work. In The Forms of Capital (1986) Pierre Bourdieu distinguishes between three forms of capital: economic capital, cultural capital and social capital. As well as using the idea of social 22
capital, he is credited with originating the concept of cultural capital, which is widely used in educational theory. The idea of capital is integral to his key theoretical concept of the social field. In addition, his theory of social fields provides a vocabulary for discussing the power relationships among fields or networks. relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition. Coleman (1999) applies the concept to education and the role of social capital in increasing human capital. His approach is based in rational choice theory and developed from his earlier work in social exchange theory. Putnam(1993) applies the concept to understanding and fostering the establishment of democratic institutions at the regional and national levels. His use of the concept of social capital is influenced by Coleman and, although his and Coleman’s areas of interest are different, they share the view that social capital is a public good, a community resource that tends to be undervalued and in short supply. Putnam explains social capital as the collective value of all 'social networks' and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other, and is a key component to building and maintaining democracy (Putnam, 1993).
Even though I have summarized the views of the three major theorists, I would like to elaborate further the debate between Putnam and Bourdieu. Putnam puts forth his concept of social capital as having three components:
moral obligations and norms, social values
(especially trust) and social networks (especially voluntary associations). His central argument is that a region having a well-functioning economic system coupled with high level of political integration will result in successful accumulation of social capital by the the region (Putnam, 1993).
This idea of Putnam is suggestive of the
functionalist
conceptions of social integration from the 1950s and early 1960s. The hypothesis is that social trust in complex, postindustrial (or postmodern) societies comes from two related sources namely norms of reciprocity and networks of civic engagement (Putnam 1993). He further adds on that in practice, norms of reciprocity are functions of networks of reciprocity. Among these networks voluntary associations are superior in importance. In practical terms therefore, Putnam's civil society is reduced to the examination of the functions of voluntary associations. Bourdieu’s social and symbolic capital (an older concept of social capital), is connected with his theoretical ideas on class and identifies three dimensions of capital each with its own relationship to class: economic, cultural and social capital. These three resources become socially effective, and their ownership is legitimized through the mediation of symbolic capital. His concept of social capital puts the emphasis on conflicts and the power function (social relations that increase the ability of an actor to advance her/his interests). 23
Social positions and the division of economic, cultural and social resources in general are legitimized with the help of symbolic capital. From the Bourdieuan perspective, social capital becomes a resource in the social struggles that are carried out in different social arenas or fields. In conclusion it can be said Putnam's idea of social capital deals with collective values and societal integration, whereas Bourdieu’s approach is made from the point of view of actors engaged in struggle in pursuit of their interests.
It has also become clear that social capital must include the resources accessed in social networks (Burt, 1997; Lin, 1999b; Portes, 1998). These resources can then be used for the good of the individual or the collective (Dakhli and DE Clercq, 2004). While the focus is on networks, Uphoff (1999) argues that networks require investment (either of time, money, information, and prestige) to yield a benefit flow (eg. of employment, income, sociability, knowledge and other payoffs). Similarly, it is also opined that some networks come free of cost, i.e, we are born into certain networks (eg. kinship network), whereas it is a costly process to enter into others (eg. political networks). Likewise, Dasgupta (2005) states that just as to establish a relationship involves costs, so it does to maintain it.
Alongside these arguments, there are also two perspectives on social capital, the individual and the group presented by Lin. The group perspective “focuses on social capital at the group level, with discussions dwelling on (1) how certain groups develop and maintain social capital as a collective asset, and (2) how such a collective asset enhances group members’ life chances” (Lin, 2001, p. 22). The individual perspective according to Lin focuses on individuals access to and use of resources embedded in social networks to gain returns in instrumental actions (eg. access to new tools and implements, finding better jobs). Jans (2003) also has a point to contribute - social structures are not independent from their context. Not every social structure will result in social capital. It is the resource, which turns the social structure into social capital. This definition is in line with the network based utilitarian approach of Lin (1999a).
The above discussion from the literature clearly shows that several thinkers have contributed to the definition and debate on the concept of social capital. From a snapshot view of some of the discussions, social capital is referred to the resources that inhere exclusively in networks, such as trust, favors, and information; and the strength and diversity of ones ‘portfolio’ of social connections constitutes social capital, There is debate on its unit of 24
analysis –social capital is regarded the property of entire countries or cultures (Fukuyama, 2001 ), while others urge a more parsimonious micro approach centered on individuals and households (Lin 1999). Networks themselves are more central to some definitions of social capital than others, and there is also a paradigm shift in thinking by the same theorists based on their different experiences. The best example is that of Putnam (1993) wherein his conceptualization shifted from an early tripartite approach - social capital as the norms, networks, and trust facilitating collective action - to a much stronger focus on the centrality of networks as the core component of social capital.
2.1.2 Historical foundations of social network concept British anthropological developments: The British social anthropology literature traces the concern of structural analysts with the direct study of networks of concrete social relations way back to post-World War II. Anthropologists focused on how cultures prescribe proper behavior within bounded groups such as tribes, villages, and work units. They believed that in focusing on culture they were reducing behavioral noise and thus getting at the essence of social systems. But Barnes (1971) opines they had difficulty in dealing with social systems in which ties cut across the framework of bounded institutionalized groups or categories in complex ways. To study these cross-cutting ties, several anthropologists in the 1950s shifted attention away from cultural systems towards structural systems of concrete ties and networks (eg, Nadel, 1957; Barnes 1971) and began developing social network concepts more systematically and self-consciously. These analysts defined a network as a set of ties linking social system members across social categories and bounded groups.
Anthropologists strongly felt the need for network analytical tools after World War II when they began studying large streams of migrants leaving culturally homogenous villages and tribes for cities and industrial areas. Contrary to their thinking, they found that rather than wilting under the impact of urbanization, industrialization and technological change, the migrants were enmeshed in complex, and supportive social networks, cutting across tribal, residential and workplace boundaries. In 1954, Barnes had self-consciously used the concept of ‘social networks’ to analyze the ties that cut across kinship groups and social classes in a Norwegian fishing village. Bott (1957) followed suit and her work bought the network 25
concept to the wider attention of social scientists.
As their work progressed, these
anthropologists gradually expanded the scope of their claims for the usefulness of ‘social network analysis’ as the approach came to be called. The anthropological response to the question of how to understand society was to turn away from structural-functional approaches to social life and look to new ways of answering questions about the constitution of boundaries and communities as socially produced ways of living in the world.
American structural analysis : The American-structural analysis started with the questions of network form unlike the British anthropologists who moved from question of substance to the study of network form. They drew from the work of Georg Simmel on how size of social systems and the ways in which relationships are interconnected constrains individual behavior and dyadic exchange. The scope of inquiries expanded leading to the development of quantitative measurements and statistical analysis like sociometry, graph theory etc to map interpersonal relations and patterns.
As Wellman (1988) points out, the structural
analysts took an astronomers view of the universe – as outside observers they studied relationships linking all members of a population. This whole network study revealed the comprehensive structure of role relationships in a social system. A basic strength of the whole network approach is that it permits simultaneous views of the social system as a whole and also of parts that make up the system (Kapferer, 1972). Having greatly increased the scope and claims of their work, many structural analysts argue that all social behavior is best analyzed by looking at the ways in which networks allocate flows of scarce resources to system members.
2.1.3 Theoretical foundations of social network concept
As a theory /model/method of analysis : Social network theory is a branch of social science that applies to a wide range of human organizations, from small groups of people to entire nations. The term network refers to a set of objects, or nodes, and a mapping or description of the relationship between the objects. In the case of social networks, the objects refer to people or groups of people. One of the reasons social network theory is studied is that by understanding the mappings connecting one individual to others, one can evaluate the social capital of that individual. As already discussed in the previous section, social capital refers to 26
the network position of the object or node and consists of the ability to draw on the resources contained by members of the network. Basically the more mappings a person has in the social network and the more mappings these other people have, the more knowledge, influence, and power the original person will control.
Social network theory views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. In its most simple form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties between the nodes being studied. The network can also be used to determine the social capital of individual actors. These concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.
The shape of the social network helps determine a network's usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter networks can be less useful to their members than network with lots of loose connections (weak ties) to individuals outside the main network. More "open" networks, with many weak ties and social connections, are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with many redundant ties. It is better for individual success to have connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked (called filling social holes).
Social network theory has becoming powerful because of its difference from the traditional sociological studies. The traditional studies view the attributes of individuals as important while from a network perspective the attributes of individuals are less important than their relationships and ties with other actors within the network. Network analysis, as Barry Wellman puts it, rejects the explanations of social behavior as the result of individuals common possession of attributes and norms rather than as the result of their involvement in structured social relations" (Wellman 1983, p. 165). In other words, one can never simply appeal to such attributes as class membership or class consciousness, political party affiliation, age, gender, social status, religious beliefs, ethnicity, sexual orientation, psychological predispositions, and so on, in order to explain why people behave the way they do without understanding the ties they have with other individuals, groups and organizations within their groups, community and village as a whole. There are several theories which 27
have used the ‘network approach’ in their theoretical underpinnings. Some of the theories and the theoretical mechanisms which they apply are listed in table 2.1 below.
Table 2.1 A listing of theories using the network approach Theories
Theoretical Mechanisms
Theories of self-interest Theory of Social capital Strength of Weak Ties Theory Transaction Cost Economics
Investments in opportunities Control of information flow Minimize the cost of transactions
Theories of mutual self-interest & collective action Public Goods Theory Critical Mass Theory
inducements to contribute Number of people with resources and interests
Exchange and Dependency theories Social Exchange Theory Resource Dependency Theory
Exchange of information)
valued
resources
(material
or
Contagion theories Social Information Processing theory Social Cognitive Theory Institutional Theory Structural Theory of Action
Exposure or contact leading to: Social influence Imitation, modeling, learning Mimetic behavior Similar positions in structure and roles
Cognitive theories Semantic Networks Knowledge Structures Cognitive Social Structures Cognitive Consistency
Cognitive mechanisms leading to: Shared interpretations Knowledge transfer Similarity in perceptual structures Drive to restore balance
Homophily theories Social Comparison Theory Social Identity Theory
Choose similar others for comparison Choose categories to define one's own group identity
Theories of proximity Physical proximity Electronic proximity
Influence of distance Influence of accessibility
Theories of uncertainty reduction Uncertainty reduction theory Contingency theory
Reduce uncertainty by communicating Reduce uncertainty in environment Providing instrumental, emotional, and material support from the network
Social support theories
Source: Monge and Contractor, (2003)
28
Structural and transactional perspectives: From the early discourses in the literature, it appeared that social networks were seen as an elaboration of basic structural-functional notions which could provide an explanation of how norm consensus and norm directed behavior was achieved (Barnes, 1954, Bott, 1957) The network structure was treated as the independent variable and the establishment of norms as the dependent variable in these studies. There have been others like Boissevain ( 1973) who adopted a structural rather than a structural-functional approach to explain the behavior of the two persons and their wives at the centers of the network primarily through recourse to the structure of the networks of the persons involved. His interests was not so much concerned with the classical functionalist problem of norm consensus and the control of deviant behavior, but primarily to spell out the interconnections among environment (both physical and social), behavior, personality, and the social network.
As a broad generalization, Banck (1973) proposes that social networks have been used in two different ways – a. the behavior of an actor is interpreted in the light of the pattern of links in his social network. These studies are based on the interaction theory where behavior is to be explained and the explanation is provided by the social network of the individual. Banck further adds that these are more or less an offshoot of the Durkheimian quest for solidarity and consensus; b.the behavior of the actor is seen in terms of the way in which he manipulates the links he has in order to achieve some end. This is in contrast to the idea proposed earlier, where social network is explained through an explanation of the ends the actor has to meet or meets and are linked with the exchange and games theories. .
Ideas that come out from such studies explained by Banck (1973) suggest that there is some validity in this distinction but it is nevertheless clear that some who use network approaches tend to see transactions, for example, as a consequence of network structure and do not see the network structure necessarily as flowing from the transactions.
More recent writers using the network approach have tended on the whole to base their arguments on a transactional model (Mayer AC, 1966; Whitten N 1969). From the point of view of network analysis, the essential proposition in these two studies is that individual behavior is seen as a consequence of the structural characteristic of the network as well as the way in which particular links in a social network may be activated by some anchor person for
29
his/her particular purpose. This has led to a number of studies of the ways in which actors utilize personal links to achieve particular ends.
Exchange theory and conflict theory: Exchange theory is one of the three closely related modern sociological theories and is recognized as a well-established approach to the study of social process and structure in the social sciences (Ritzer, 1990), which has been affected by other intellectual currents and science disciplines.
Exchange theory offers a dynamic
conceptual scheme for understanding the relationship between individual and society--a blueprint, as it were, for understanding the mechanism of integration between structure and process (Cook et al, 1990, Mole and Cook, 1995). Social behavior is envisaged as an exchange of activity, tangible or intangible, and more or less rewarding or costly, between at least two persons'(Homans, 1961). Actors are profit seekers who want to maximize their wealth while interacting with others. However, this theory is not sufficient to explain human being's behavior such as norms and values and the large-scale social structure, although it is argued that by some that structure can be understood if we adequately understand elementary social behavior (Ritzer, 1996).
Alternately, Peter Blau developed his exchange theory
towards understanding social structure on the basis of an analysis of the processes that govern the relations between individual and groups. The basic question to Blau (1975) is how social life becomes organized into increasingly complex structures of associations among men. His concern was on the mechanisms that lead to the change of social structure and he focused on the process of exchange which directs much of human behavior and underlies relationship among individuals as well as among groups. He also attaches great importance on the abstract concepts such as value, conscience, ideas, and impression, strains and social norms that bond society together. Blau is concerned with what holds large-scale social units together and what tears them apart and therefore he discusses at length groups, organization, collectivities, societies, norms and values. Peter Blau's exchange theory is usually regarded as macro theoretical perspective.
Molm and Cook (1995) in their descriptions identify Emerson’s attempt to deal with social structure and social change by using social relations and social networks as building blocks that spanned different levels of analysis – micro to more macro levels of analysis through the study of exchange networks structures. This notion of exchange networks, allows for the development of theory that bridges the conceptual gap between isolated individuals or dyad and larger aggregates or collections of individuals (e.g. formal groups or associations, 30
organizations, neighborhoods, political parties, etc.). His network analysis on power is an important and useful synthesized approach in studying large-scale structure such as corporations and nation-states. His more structural efforts have greatly influenced the contemporary exchange theory into an integrative micro-macro approach and are quite similar to that of Collins paradigms. Although his network theory is relatively new and undeveloped, his idea is also helpful in understanding modern international relation.
Although there are differences between exchange theorists and conflict theorists in their level of analysis, they have the approximately same ideas on the individuals. Exchange theorists regard individuals as the profit-seekers who want to maximize benefits while interacting with others and conflict theorists also see people as self-interested, thus clashes are possible because sets of interests may be inherently antagonistic. Both schools of thought believe that human actions are predicable and controllable because human beings have goals for their actions. The fundamental difference however, between exchange theory and conflict theory is that, the basic unit of analysis to the exchange theorist is the social relationship (Ritzer,1996) while the conflict theorists major interests are in the social structure illustrated by interest groups, class, and states. If there is any weaknesses in these two theories, criticisms on exchange theory are that human behaviors are not always controllable and human being do not always calculate their cost.
Structuration theory: Giddens (1976, 1984), appears to have the most sophisticated way of connecting a micro sociological theory of social action with a macro sociological explanation of the systems and structures of society. Structuration means studying the ways in which social systems are produced and reproduced in social interaction. Structuration theory of Anthony Giddens attempts to explain the subject-object dualism as well as explain and integrate human agency with social structure. For Giddens (1984), human agency and social structure are not two separate concepts or constructs, but are two ways that social action can be studied and understood sociologically. There is a duality of structures in society – on one side there are situated actors who undertake social action and interaction, and enter into knowledgeable activities in various situations.
At the same time, social systems and
structures form the rules, resources, and social relationships that actors produce and reproduce through social interaction. This structuration perspective differs from the external and coercive social facts of Durkheim in that structure is not outside social action, but exists only because of social action. While a structuration perspective implies constraints on social 31
action, it provides for flexibility in individual and group action and a means of explaining social change. The value of Giddens’s systems and structures is to provide a means of bridging the structure-agency gap, focusing on systems and structures as patterns of enacted conduct.
Structural-functionalism: One of the key ideas in Structural Functionalism is that society is made-up of groups or institutions, which are cohesive, share common norms, and have a definitive culture. Radcliffe-Brown, an anthropologist, who is also called as the father of structural functionalism focused on social structure. He argued that the social world constituted a separate "level" of reality, distinct from those of biological forms (people) and inorganic forms. His ideology was that explanations of social phenomena had to be constructed at the social level and this meant that people were merely replaceable, temporary occupants of social roles, that were of no inherent worth. Individuals were only significant in relation to their positions in the overall structure of social roles in society. Structural Functionalism asserts that the way society is organized is the most natural and efficient way for it to be organized. His work on the African tribes made him acquainted with the intricacies of kinship and social organization among the tribes. His works also gave him new insights into totemism and myth.
2.2 Network features As more studies are published in which the notion of social networks is used, certain concepts seem to be more and more commonly accepted. In general, a major distinction refers to two very different aspects of linkages in social networks. These are the morphological as opposed to the interactional features of social networks. The morphological features of a social network are those which deal with the shape or pattern of the links in a network. The earliest feature of networks isolated for theoretical use was a morphological characteristic. This was the notion of "connectedness" which Bott (1958) used to distinguish the characteristic of social networks of couples in relation to their sharing or not sharing domestic tasks. Wolfe (1970) , however, suggest that the notion could be measured by the density of 1inks among a set of points, and both suggest using a measure i.e. the ratio of actual existing links to the total number of possible links. The fact that links exist among people also does not imply that they will necessarily use these links to pass on certain types of information. 32
The notion of the compartment of a network introduced by Thoden van Velzen (1973) is related to the notion of a cluster. He defines a compartment in the same way as Niemeijer (1973) defines a cluster. In fact, it is clear from the way in which Thoden van Velzen uses the notion that a compartment is based on a cluster with in a partial network. The set of relationships must in fact constitute a cluster. Also the relationship must be based upon some identifiable feature of social relationships. Thoden vah Velzen, for example, in his analysis of the power struggle going on in a Tanzanian rural area, distinguishes two pairs of compartments. One is based on ethnic identification comprising one cluster of people with affiliations with the Ndali and another of those affiliated to the Nyiha. A second pair of compartments is based on religious affiliations, one based upon Christianity and another on paganism. Other morphological characteristics of social networks which most analysts of social data will need to take into consideration are: anchorage, the point of reference of a social network; reachability, the number of links that intervene between some originating person and some target person and range; and the number of persons with which a member of a network has links.
There are several attributes of social networks that have been hypothesized to influence outcomes, including size, density, strength of ties and composition. In general, these network or tie characteristics capture some aspect of ‘range,' which is defined as the extent to which a network contains a diverse set of actors (Burt, 1983). The argument of Granovetter (1973) which is couched in the language of strong and weak ties, actually focuses on range rather than the strength of ties. He explains that weak ties are not beneficial because they are weak but because they are more likely than strong ties to occupy structural locations that connect persons who do not know one another. In that way, they can act as ‘bridges' between otherwise unconnected social worlds and provide ego with non-redundant information.
Network composition, is defined as the average characteristics of the people in a person's social network. The conceptualization of the importance of network composition is based on findings that ties which bridge disparate social worlds are especially useful in the search for jobs. Particular attention is given to the diversity of social networks, i.e., whether they are comprised of a homogenous or heterogeneous group of individuals. A homogeneous network is one in which all of the members share a particular characteristic. There is a propensity for social networks to be homogeneous on many important dimensions, such as race and class 33
(Marsden, 1987). Yet, heterogeneity, like weak ties, is beneficial because it provides bridges to different social worlds. As Burt (1983) argues, having a number of different status groups in one's network is one aspect of range.
A related aspect of network composition is the amount of resources that are available through it. Following Bourdieu (1986), social networks are often viewed as an element of social capital. Bourdieu's conceptualization stresses that the amount of social capital possessed by an actor depends on both the number of network connections that she can mobilize and on the sum of the amount of ‘capital', financial, human, and cultural, that each network member possesses. It is recognized that range in itself will not necessarily produce positive job outcomes. Having access to diverse alters who are of high status is more beneficial than access to diverse alters who are of low status.
Examining composition in relation to neighborhood, race or ethnicity, gender and education, the presence of alters who reside outside of the woman's neighborhood indicates a more extensive social network. People who only have alters who live in their neighborhoods are likely to have network members who know one another or who are similar to one another. Having access to alters outside of one's neighborhood increases the likelihood of obtaining non-redundant information about jobs. This is especially important in light of theories about social isolation (e.g., Wilson, 1987 and Wilson, 1996). Residents of poor neighborhoods are thought to be socially and spatially distant from people with high socioeconomic status. For these persons having ties to alters outside of the neighborhood may be crucial to finding a job, whereas ties to people in living in the same impoverished neighborhood are not as likely to provide useful employment information.
The gender composition of women's networks is important for two reasons. First, gender diversity could represent access to a larger social world of contacts than a gender-segregated network. Second, men have stronger and deeper connections to the labor market than women. Men occupy more powerful positions within the workforce than women, and may represent a resource for women when present in their social networks. When a woman works in a maledominated occupation, a male alter may be particularly helpful (Hanson and Pratt, 1991). The socioeconomic resources of the people in the network are another important component of social network composition. Job searchers who are able to utilize the information and influence of powerful, wealthy or prestigious individuals are likely to find better jobs than 34
those who do not have such connections. Lin et al. (1981), for example, find that the higher the occupational status of the job contact, the higher the occupational status of the job the searcher obtains. Because highly educated people tend to have high status occupations, people who have highly educated persons in their network should also benefit in the labor market. In addition, the high socioeconomic status of alters, measured as educational attainment in our analysis, should increase range because higher status is associated with more diverse networks (Campbell et al., 1986) which could in turn connect ego to a more diverse, and beneficial, set of second order contacts
2.3 Defining networks with special reference to Indian social structure In contrast to the industrialized nations, cities of the developing countries like India exist in predominantly rural societies and therefore an understanding of village life is basic to understanding the larger society. I present here the arguments put forth by Srinivas and Beteille (1964), who were interested in changes resulting from modernization in the morphology and content of networks at the village level, and in the methodological problems of moving from concrete observations of individuals in their diverse roles to abstract representations of systems of relationships. The authors view the village principally in terms of a set of enduring groups and categories such as castes, sub-castes and economic classes, and hence comes the problem of interpersonal relations. These relations between groups and categories form parts of different systems, e.g. between lineages, territorial segments and age sets, or between castes, classes and power blocks.
Representation of the relations between castes in a system of castes involves one level of abstraction while representation of the relations between the system of castes and the system of classes involves an abstraction at a higher level (Srinivas and Beteille,1964). It is also pointed out by the authors that the abstract relations between groups and systems of groups can be better understood by mapping out the concrete relations between individuals in their diverse roles – implying that there has to be a paradigm shift from a study of groups within a system of groups to a study of social networks. The authors conclude that the concept of social network paves the way to an understanding of the linkage existing between different institutional spheres and between different systems of groups and categories. 35
With the changes in the global external environment including globalization, liberalization of trade and advances in new science and tools like ICT, boundaries between groups in village communities in India have either become blurred or broken and there is greater mix of people, and an increasing degree of interpenetration between different systems of groups, classes and categories (Srinivas and Beteille,1964).
This process makes it increasingly
difficult to locate and define the boundaries of groups, and hence to talk meaningfully of groups of persons within a system of groups. In India this partial dissolution of a rigid, segmented and hierarchical social structure is associated with increasing social mobility, both horizontal and vertical. It is also associated with the transition from a status-bound social order to one which gives greater scope to contractual relations based on personal choice. It is clear that the individual is being progressively drawn into networks of interpersonal relations which cut right across the boundaries of village, sub-caste and lineage (Srinivas and Beteille, 1964).
Using examples from Sripuram village in south India, Srinivas sketches the conditions under which networks emerge and become increasingly important in social life. According to him, the distinctive features of networks is that it ramifies in every direction and the character of a network varies from one individual to another. Similarly, networks can be either close-knit or loose-knit. It is viewed that one way of understanding social change in India would be to analyze the manner in which close-knit networks are being transformed into loose-knit ones (Srinivas and Beteille, 1964). With the changing situation in contemporary India, and increased mobility, relationships now cut across caste, class, gender and kin group, with diverse interests – economic, social, political. The once upon a closed network is now becoming an open network in India also. Furthermore, a network, even when viewed from the standpoint of a single individual, has a dynamic character with new relations forged, old relations modified or discarded depending on the choice of the individual. So also, the village comprises a diversity of individuals, each with his own network of concrete interpersonal relations. These partly overlap, and partly cut across, and are, in fact related to one another in very complex ways (Srinivas and Beteille, 1964). Similar attempts were made by Singh AM (1976) who sought to establish the integral relationship between the structure of voluntary organizations of a migrant community at the macro-level and the structure and content of inter-personal relationships at the micro-level. Her attempt was to bring out the multiple identities of individual actors in the urban setting migrating from the rural areas. From the study it can be inferred that while the urban society in India is fragmented by religion, caste, 36
sect, creed etc., there exists a broader and more complex type of social integration than is commonly assumed. The study of voluntary associations of migrant in urban settings opens an avenue for the understanding of human factors and needs that shape the migrant’s life in a new urban setting. It also helps us to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics and quality of urban life in general.
2.4 Role of social networks in influencing decisions in general There is a considerable body of literature on social capital and social networks, which has been published over a relatively short period of time. Each of these have some interesting findings to offer. This concept is found to be useful in understanding how cooperation, collective/group action can help people combat poverty. It is realized that the root causes of poverty do not lie primarily within the weak social fabric of poor communities but in the wider context of economic and political structures of the society. The focus is on how social capital looked at from the point of networks and relationships, can empower people personally and in revitalizing their communities and thus impact on their everyday lives.
This section presents some findings from the literature in different areas. It looks at the role of social networks on fertility decisions, child well-being, migration among others. The next section focuses exclusively on social networks of the farming community.
Demographers have argued increasingly that social interaction is an important mechanism for understanding fertility behavior. Yet, it is still quite uncertain whether social learning or social influence is the dominant mechanism through which social networks affect individuals' contraceptive decisions. Kohler (2001) argues that these mechanisms can be distinguished by analyzing the density of the social network and its interaction with the proportion of contraceptive users among network partners. Their analyses indicate that social learning is most relevant with high market activity and in regions with modest market activity social influence is the dominant means by which social networks affect women's contraceptive use. Corroborating this finding is the results of the study by Behrman (2002) who he investigated the impacts of social networks on changes in contraception in rural Kenya suggesting that networks provide information to both men and women primarily through social learning and 37
not by exerting social influence. Barber (2002) investigates the influence of participation in and exposure to voluntary associations on fertility-limiting behavior and his results show that participation in a range of voluntary associations increases permanent contraceptive use. Furthermore, living in a neighborhood with a voluntary association increases permanent contraceptive use. Another important conclusion from his study is that participation in different types of voluntary associations — including credit groups, women's groups, agricultural groups, and youth groups — appears to be similarly related to permanent contraceptive use.
Kanaiaupuni (2005) studies the conditions under which networks generate greater (lesser) support and kinds of networks that are associated with healthier children. From the key findings it can be inferred that networks containing more extended kin and co-resident ties offer greater support resources to mothers with young children, especially among the poorest households. It is found that network structures characterized by more social support and greater interaction with extended, rather than immediate, kin help sustain healthier children. Together these findings indicate the advantages of examining specific role relationships in network research among economically marginalized families and the importance of social networks founded on principles of reciprocity and trust.
Data from almost 13,000 respondents of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) were used by Scott (2004) to examine the impact of residential and school mobility on the structure of adolescents' friendship networks and the degree to which parents know their children's friends and the parents of those friends. Recent movers or school changers tend to have small, dense networks, and occupy less central and less prestigious positions in their networks, and the parents of mobile adolescents are less knowledgeable about members of their children's networks. The level of mobility in the school often has an independent impact on the character of adolescents' friendship networks; students in high-mobility schools have smaller networks and receive comparatively few friendship nominations, and their parents are less likely to know their children's friends and those friends' parents. The impact of mobility on some network characteristics is especially pronounced among older adolescents and among girls. In a similar way, Fletcher (2001) identified fourth-grade children's peer groups using the Social Cognitive Mapping (SCM) procedure. Higher levels of social network closure were linked with higher achievement test scores and lower levels of parent-reported externalizing behavior. The study by Chen (2001) 38
examined the relevance of group social functioning to individual social, academic, and psychological adjustment. It was found that social functioning, including sociability, aggression, and shyness-inhibition, of group peers had unique contributions to individual social and school adjustment and adjustment problems, over and above the child's self social functioning in China. In another study, Ream (2005) attempted to link the social capital literature with research on student mobility to investigate low test score performance among Mexican origin youth. Findings encourage greater sensitivity to inter- and intra-ethnic distinctions in the socialization process that contribute to group differences in the availability and utility of the resources that inhere in social networks.
Literature reveals that the French and Haitian revolutions forced the migration of over thirty thousand exiles throughout the Atlantic world in the two decades after 1789. Focusing on the earliest and largest waves of migration during the 1790s, concepts drawn from social network analysis present evidences to illustrate the interconnected nature of social networks in the Atlantic world. Meadows (2000) argues that these forced migrations often resembled the kind of chain migrations historians have witnessed in other contexts. This research also suggests the need to distinguish between the ability to survive the migration and the migration experience itself. Despite their ability to survive under force, trans-Atlantic migration intact, many exiles nonetheless carried the emotional and material scars of their exile experience: the loss of loved ones, property, and, for some, their identity as French men and women. Findings from Thailand reveal that trips and duration of time away from home have distinct influences upon migration; that household level migrant networks are more influential than village level migrant networks; that female migrant networks and male migrant networks have different influences upon migration outcomes; and, that migrant social capital influences men and women's migration differently. This elaboration provides significant quantitative evidence of how gender and family influence migration dynamics Curran (2005). The findings also suggest that distinguishing the gender composition and destination content of migrant networks deepens our understanding of how cumulative causation affects patterns of migration. Social capital indirectly influences how a job is obtained and whether it is in the formal sector, while having friends and relatives with migratory experience improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the job search to yield higher wages. These results confirm and extend social capital theory and the importance of social networks in understanding the determination of migrant earnings Aguilera (2003). Reliance on social ties provides a
39
mechanism by which immigrants gain employment throughout the multiethnic metropolitan labor market (Sanders, 2002).
Granovetter (1973, 1974), Fernandez et al. (2000) and Munshi (2003) find that workers have better chances of finding employment when using networks. In particular, they argue that weak ties constituted by acquaintances are more effective than strong ties with close friends in part due to the fact that acquaintances move in social circles distinct from those of your close friends. As a result, weak ties may offer inside information on alternative job openings. Similarly, Datcher (1983) finds evidence of a positive impact of social networks on employment, although from a different perspective. In particular, Datcher focuses on the impact of informal networks on the probability of quitting a job and finds that workers with contacts before being hired are less likely to quit their jobs. Yet another study investigating the effect of social network on employment is the analysis by Calvo-Armengol and Jackson (2004) that shows that the employment likelihood increases with the extent of social contacts.
Despite the tremendous implications that financial decisions have for socioeconomic wellbeing, the study of financial decision-making has been left largely to economists. The paper by Chang (2005) places this topic firmly within sociological terrain and demonstrates that the search for financial information is embedded within broader systems of social inequality. Analyses of data from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances reveal that social networks are by far the most frequently used source of saving and investment information; however they are used most often by those with the least wealth. Wealthier households are more likely to turn to paid financial professionals and to certain forms of media for saving and investment information. Results indicate that those at the top of the socioeconomic ladder
gather
information from multiple sources possibly to minimize the risk of making a poor decision; yet as socioeconomic status increases, networks are decreasingly likely to be among the sources consulted. Renzulli (2005) examines the connection between personal network characteristics and the activation of ties for access to resources during routine times. The focus is on factors affecting business owners' use of their core network ties to obtain legal, loan, financial and expert advice. Owners rely more on core business ties when their core networks contain a high proportion of men, are very dense, and have high occupational heterogeneity.
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A classic issue in sociology is to understand how power is extended vertically through hierarchies and horizontally through industrial networks and markets. This was once extensively studied by Weber. Yet it is little studied today. Definitions of power exclude power exercise beyond the single relation, as does research in exchange networks. In contrast, research in organizations recognizes the extension of power, but offers no theory to explain how it is produced or to identify the conditions which might further or impede it. Here the extension of power beyond the single relationship is called power-at-a-distance. New theory offering metric predictions is applied to power-at a-distance in exchange networks. This theory identifies the conditions that extend power beyond the dyad and the conditions that tend to block that extension. Five experiments on contrasting structures broadly support those predictions. Relations between power-at-a-distance and power centralization are theorized and practical problems of extending power are addressed by Willer (2003). Some scholars have attempted to bring collective action into the study of structural determinants of power in social exchange. Previous research has focused primarily on the bargaining power of actors whose locations in exchange networks confer different risks of exclusion. Scholars argue that structural position affects not only bargaining power but also the ability of low-power actors to organize against unequal bargaining power. It is hypothesized that collective action among low-power actors is facilitated by identification with others who are structurally disadvantaged. Causes of gender differences and identification of directions for future exchange-theoretic research on social identity and socially embedded collective action is proposed by the scholars.
Theories of neighborhood social organization and crime have not effectively explained the existence of socially organized, high-crime neighborhoods. Browning (2004) tests an alternative theory of urban violence that highlights the tension between two dimensions of social organization — social networks (ties and exchange between neighborhood residents) and collective efficacy (mutual trust and solidarity combined with expectations for prosocial action) — in the regulation of neighborhood crime. It is argued in the paper that while social networks may contribute to neighborhood collective efficacy, they also provide a source of social capital for offenders, potentially diminishing the regulatory effectiveness of collective efficacy.
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2.5 Agriculture, agrarian change and technology adoption in India
Agriculture all over the world is undergoing a transformation.
In some places the
transformation process is fast whereas in some it is lagging. From primary production for subsistence and food self-sufficiency, it now includes value added chain, the idea of from farmer to fork. The multifunctionality of agriculture was introduced to maintain subsidy, and is an important contribution of how we need to see agriculture. The holistic perspective of looking at rural development in toto broadened the idea of agriculture to include health, education and well-being. So when agriculture is examined from this multidimensional perspective, the seven reasons in Maxwell's (2005)1 article take on a different nuance and in some cases their meanings are transformed. The seven reasons include: agricultural prices, subsidies, sustainability, supply chain, economies of scale, planners and interests of farmers. For example, sustainability from this more holistic perspective of agriculture means much more than sustained growth and environmental management - it implies social networks and new business networks where environmental concerns can be good business. Changes in the supply chain, would not only look at food but other fiber products and how they can be integrally managed from a systems perspective.
Another idea that is currently being adopted is the territorial approach to rural development. This demands that we look at the combined resources within a given geographical space (at different scales i.e. local, municipal, state, national). These resources include natural resources for agricultural production and non agricultural economic activities, social networks, cultural patrimony and history, image and perceptions of consumers, interterritorial relationships, infrastructure, human capital, skills and capabilities. Looking at the present use and possible potential of these resources can provide information on how to improve competitiveness.
As reiterated earlier, Indian agriculture has undergone a transformation since the late nineteenth century and continues to do so even in the present day. Joshi (1969) expresses that the study of agrarian change is a starting point whether one is analyzing political change or the agricultural transformation or changes in social institutions and values. He also articulates that to study agrarian structure one has to study the groups connected with land, 1
For details see Maxwell (2005). Farming and the poor: seven new challenges. ODI
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by identifying these groups and capturing as many features of reality as possible, in a given area.
Agrarian relations in India have undergone and are undergoing significant changes as a consequence of land reforms and technological revolution. There is a whole body of studies and review by many Indian and foreign authors on this subject. I present a summary from the literature through the works of Bhalla, Shergill, Mohanty, Lerche (2011) to name a few. Bhalla (1988) states that in terms of agrarian structure, a major change has been brought about through the abolition of absentee landlordism in most states of India and that selfcultivation has emerged as the dominant mode. In addition to land reforms, the policy makers in India have pursued a deliberate policy of modernizing agriculture through largescale investment in irrigation and power and through the creation of other infrastructure like credit institutions, regulated markets, rural roads and extension and research institutions. There have been deliberate attempts to increase the production of commercial crops wherever possible. However, this change is not happening all across the country and is in selected pockets of the country. The regional variations in both implementation of land reforms on the one hand and spread of modern techniques of production on the other have produced widely varying rural institutional structures in different parts
of the country. A highly
skewed land distribution, proletarianisation of sizeable sections of the rural population, widespread share-tenancy and interlocked factor markets are some of the more regressive features of the agrarian production relations that are supposed to not only inhibit the transition to a more progressive agriculture but also block even the 'trickle-down' of benefits to the rural poor of whatever little increase in farm production occurs in such a socioeconomic milieu (Shergill, 1989).
Mohanty B (1999) in his essay on agricultural
modernization articulates that modernization was based on exploitative land, labor and credit relations and is guided by the colonial interests. This process actually resulted in more social inequality which continued over time even during the post-independence India.
Djurfeldt et.al (2008) from their study of social mobility in Tamil Nadu conclude that almost all growth in population occurred outside the agrarian sector. The general conclusion is that village economies have gone through a considerable structural transformation in the last generation. And going by trends, the agrarian population will be down to half the total population, compounded of course by migration, which seems to have increased in the recent past. 43
There are a number of studies that focused on the different components of the green revolution and the way it transformed Indian agriculture from food deficit to food surplus economy (Dhanagare, 1987; Bhalla, 1984, 1973, Bhalla and Chadha, 1983). It is a well established fact that green revolution technologies and a dynamic smallholder sector have seen agriculture reach more heights in the last five decades in south Asian countries including India (Viswanathan et al, 2012). However, this transition has not been uniform across different parts of India, especially in the more arid and semi-arid parts sometimes also referred to as the drylands of the country. Regions outside the green revolution belts tell a story of distress migration - from the drylands mostly driven by poverty and lack of access to water for agriculture (Agoramoorthy et al 2009).
Another point articulated in the literature is that though green revolution technologies have enabled agricultural growth in India, their benefits have been mostly confined to specific crops and resource-endowed regions in the initial years. Alongside this growth, large scale adoption of these technologies have resulted in deteriorating land and soil quality, undue exploitation of land and water resources leading to acute ground water table lowering (Chand 2010). A critical assessment of agricultural transformation in Asia, particularly in India by Viswanathan et al (2012) reveals that millions of small farmers in marginal regions with fragile soils and complex rainfed agriculture did not benefit from this as it did not trickle down to them. This is also echoed in the WCED report (1987).
Jha and Rhodes (1999) in their analysis on technical efficiency and ownership of inputs by farmers established that clear ownership of factors of production facilitates the attainment of high levels of technical efficiency in areas where the Green Revolution has been active. This conclusion then suggests that the green revolution was not so successful in areas where this is not the case, especially states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh. This implies that governments of states that are lagging behind in the adoption of new technology should concentrate to increase the technical efficiency of farming. There are also arguments that the green revolution was both labor displacing and labor absorbing depending on the predominating inputs (Zarkovic, M) and that economic growth resulting from the application of that technology was in favor of the men. The implications of these findings extend beyond the boundaries of Punjab and Haryana, redressing the disfavorable effect of the green revolution on this segment of the labor force must be a policy objective.
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Hazell (2009) in his assessment and analysis on the Asian green revolution agrees that the initial Green Revolution technology package worked best for wheat and rice in the best irrigated areas, but he also adds that within 10 to 15 years the technologies also evolved to accommodate the challenges of many poorer regions growing a wider range of food crops under rainfed or less assured irrigation conditions, which is also supported by Vakulabharanam (2007). Hazells’s argument is that continuing advances in the agricultural sciences have increased the range of areas that can benefit from Green Revolution technologies. The problem according to him is not availability of technologies but appropriate public policies and investment support by the government. He outlines some preconditions for the green revolution to happen and these include access to a package of affordable inputs, availability of credit to the smallholder farmers also, extension system to provide the knowledge to use them, stability in prices and assured market access - both input and product markets. .
Frankel (1971) from her analysis of data collected in 5 districts of India where the green revolution technologies were being adopted. Her reasoning based on the analysis was that agricultural laborers gained where high yielding variety (HYV) has been widespread and labor supply not generally excessive relative to demand, especially so in Ludhiana and West Godavari. She concludes that HYV improves labor's bargaining position, especially casual labourers, because of the high labor requirements all through the year. Frankel opines that labor's lessened deference and dependence on landlords and greater sense of social and psychological freedom. Over the long run, however, Frankel sees labor's position as deteriorating due the changes in payment options, like from kind wages to cash payment, withdrawal of certain customary privileges such as interest-free loans and fodder for their animals. Another opinion was that the proportion of 'surplus appropriators' – meaning either rich peasants, capitalist farmers, cultivating landlords or original
landlords in the wet
regions(implying the regions with good irrigation) was high – almost three to four times higher than those in the drylands (Athreya et al, 1983: 56-57). This polarisation process as termed by Dhangare (1987) accentuated the rural class differences further during the green revolution. The number of landless labourers and their proportion to the rural population grew in most regions and tenants lost their lands as landlords were able to evict them including sharecroppers (Bagchi, 1984: 176, Dhangare, 1984). 45
The feminization of agriculture has also been one of the major aspects of rural transformation in the green revolution areas in general as well as in the SAT which is attributed to factors such as male outmigration, the increase in labour-intensive cash crops and persistent poverty in rural areas (UNIFEM 2008). The increasing rise in female-headed household and thereby the growing feminization is due to causes such as changes in traditional occupational base, agricultural practices, landholding patterns and patron-client relationships along with population growth contribute to the growing numbers of women-headed households (Lingam, 1994). The increasing feminization of agriculture assumes importance in the face of the existing organization and relations of production in agriculture. Compared to men, women have poor access to land and other productive assets as well as services such as training, extension and credit (Agarwal 1994, 2010; Vepa 2005; Kelkar 2009). Continuing this debate on the feminization of agriculture in the face of an incomplete agrarian transition, Agrawal B (2010) argues for a new institutional approach to poverty reduction, agricultural revival and social empowerment. Her analysis makes a strong case for a group approach to agricultural investment and production by promoting collectivities of the poor . She proposes that these collectivities proposed will be based on small-sized, voluntary, socio-economically homogeneous population involving participatory decision-making. She describes a range of successful cases of agricultural production collectivities from the transition economies of India and China and how these efforts could be replicated for wider geographic coverage and impact. (Agrawal B, 2010). She further elaborates that lesson can be learned from the example of the successful collectivities - the women SHGs- which have an inherent desire for social transformation or atleast a potential for such a transformation.
The literature on innovation is diverse and has developed its own vocabulary. There are two distinguishing research lines: research on innovation generation and research on the adoption and use of innovation. Let us first discuss technology adoption in agriculture with special reference to India. The role of high-yielding technologies in improving the well-being of agricultural households in developing countries has been widely documented in the economic literature. Several papers have examined theoretical and empirical issues associated with the adoption and diffusion process for new technologies (Feder; Foster and Rosenzweig; Conley and Udry; Sunding and Zilberman). While some researcher emphasized on the importance of farm size and credit constraints on the adoption process other focused on the nature of the technology itself, the rate of adoption as well as constraints to adoption. An extensive review of the literature on the adoption of agricultural technologies is made by Doss (2006). Recent 46
literature is now increasingly focusing on the capacity of farmers to make decisions and learn or the role of learning in the diffusion process (Foster and Rosenzweig,1995; Cameron, 1999; Conley and Udry, 2001).
For example, Cameron's work on rural Indian village
emphasized the importance of learning-by-doing or -using, while Conley and Udry examined the role of social learning for technology adoption by farmers in Ghana. I provide a much more detailed review of this in the next section. Kshirsagar et.al (2002) from their research on varietal characteristics, farmer’s perception and technology adoption opine that technology adoption is governed by farmer perceptions based on their understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of new technology compared with the existing technology. However, the perceptions of farmers are not always documented as well as analyzed in adoption studies. Based on an analysis of the data on farmer perception of improved rice varieties in Orissa, the authors conclude that the reason for low adoption of improved varieties and the high degree of varietal diversity is due to the significant attention placed by farmers on the quality characteristics their of new varieties.
Matuschke et.al (2007) analyze the adoption and impact of hybrid wheat in India especially on smallholder farmers in the state of Maharashtra which is a part of the semi-arid tropics . Her analysis of the survey data shows that farmers can benefit significantly from the wheat technology. Size of the farms nor the subsistence level influence the adoption decision. One of the major determinants of adoption was the access to credit. The study also reveals that adoption levels would be higher if seed prices were reduced. Another major conclusion from the study is that access to information and income significantly influence adoption of hybrid wheat. And lastly, it is concluded that individual networks, as opposed to village networks, also play a role in the adoption process. Therefore it is recommended that the distribution of sufficient and concise information should be through multiple channel to raise the adoption levels.
The central concept in innovation research as well as in social networks are quite similar. There are a lot of studies and papers by Andy Hall, Rasheed Sulaiman and others on this research topic from which a good synthesis can be got. I quote the summary provided by Andy Hall (2007, pg 2) which draws similarity to the concept of social networks
-
“innovation requires knowledge from multiple sources, including from users of that knowledge; it involves these different sources of knowledge interacting with each other in 47
order to share and combine ideas; these interactions and processes are usually very specific to a particular context; and
each context has its own routines and traditions that reflect
historical origins shaped by culture, politics, policies and power.”
Vamsidhar et al (2010)
also reiterate that innovation is a process as well as a capacity for change and is the means through which societies can achieve their economic and social aspirations. The focus is not just on the new technologies or products but also on the context, the mechanism and conditions that will allow these ideas to be adopted, adapted and put into productive us. Along with this, there is a need to move away from technology diffusion to systems of innovation because of the failure of the agricultural extension system to meet its objectives. Their many works on this topic also conclude that efforts should be focused on building social capital in agricultural innovation systems in contextually relevant ways (Hall 2006, Sulaiman and Hall, 2008). Disillusioned with the effectiveness of technology dissemination efforts as a way of getting research into more widespread use, the policy focus in India, in the last 10 years has been on exploring the nature of partnerships needed to share and use ideas and on examining the role of private companies, in particular. The logic behind this is that such arrangements manage the innovation process and it is, thus, within these sets of arrangements that agricultural research, science and technology can find a meaningful way of bringing about change (Vamsidhar et al. 2010, pg 8).
2.6 Social learning, social networks and technology adoption Social capital plays an important role in influencing adoption impacts of agricultural technology, because of the ways in which social networks and social relationships facilitate and constrain technology dissemination. As a result of differing social networks and correspondingly different levels of access to information, men and women experience different economic consequences (Padmaja et al, 2006, Bantilan and Padmaja, 2008). Case studies by ICRISAT have shown that in marginal lands with low rainfall and subsistence agriculture, collective action by both men and women helps in developing coping strategies, such as adoption of new seed of NRM technology, transfer of information, rotating savings and credit associations, migration and other social and security measures (Rao et al, 2004). The dynamic interplay between grassroots and different institutions – formal and informal-
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that favoured collective action by people in rural India, defying problems related to casteist and patriarchal traditions, needs to be further analyzed from a gendered point of view.
Small-scale producers often rely on informal mechanisms of information exchange and knowledge sharing to address agricultural problems and challenges. Given the limited scope of formal extension programs, informal exchange is often the primary source of information about new technologies in sub-Saharan Africa. The increasing role of informal mechanisms for information sharing has been recognized in the literature through farmer-to-farmer models of agricultural development (Eveleens et al, 1996).
Isham (2000) argues that economic research on technology adoption and diffusion of innovation in rural areas has only partially addressed the issue of how interpersonal network exchanges affect adoption. Similar studies on adoption and diffusion build their modeling or empirical estimation on a very likely assumption: that neighboring agricultural households are, de facto, members of a social structure who exchange information about improved agricultural practices. Yet much economic and non-economic research suggests that the characteristics of social structures are critical determinants of the way that information is diffused among households. In many cases, adoption is better accounted for as a networkbased decision, where exposure to an innovation through a network of peers has a cumulatively increasing influence on adoption as pressure toward conformity builds and as risks perceived by potential adopters decrease (Valente, 1995).
Recent research work on social learning in agriculture shows that farmers learn how to cultivate a new crop from past choices of others in their social network cultivating the same crop (Conley and Udry, 2000). Bandiera and Rasul (2006) present evidence on how farmers decisions to adopt a new crop relate to the adoption choices of their network of family and friends. They find the relationship to be inverse-U shaped, suggesting social effects are positive when there are few adopters in the network, and negative when there are many. The study results indicate that the adoption decisions of farmers who have better information about the new crop are less sensitive to the adoption choices of others.
Empirical evidence also demonstrates that farmers learn how to cultivate a new crop from the choices of others cultivating the same crop (Besley and Case, 1997; Foster and Rosenzweig, 1995; Conley and Udry, 2003; Munshi, 2004). This literature shows the importance of social 49
learning after a new technology has been adopted. It also addresses the question of whether social learning leads initial adoption decisions to be correlated within social networks. This sheds light on which individuals are the first to adopt a new technology, which in turn, affects its diffusion. The analysis of social learning in the specific context of rural technologies also yields useful insights to help understand the adoption and diffusion of new technologies in other economic environments. The insights apply to any situation in which lack of information is a barrier to adoption and potential adopters can communicate with each other.
Feder and Slade (1985) state that the dynamics of diffusion processes depend mostly on horizontal communication among farmers. Adoption is strongly influenced by members of the same social group. New ideas are more easily adopted when they come from others who are similar in several respects. It seems that in the empirical literature every measurable characteristic of farms and farmers has been found to be statistically related to some measure of adoption of some innovation (Rogers, 2003) . Several studies have documented that households who are actively involved in social networks are better insured against unforeseen risks of failures or financial losses than households who are less involved in social networks and have few relatives (Barlett, 1980). Masuki et al., (2004) highlighted that group networking, number of years spent in formal education, age of head of household and pathways of agricultural information all affect the intensity of adoption positively and significantly. Agbamu (1995) also indicated that, information sources that positively influence the adoption of technologies can include: other farmers; media; meetings and extension officers. Indeed, studies of innovation adoption and diffusion have long recognized information as a key variable, and its availability is typically found to correlate with adoption (De Harrera and Sain, 1999). Wellman (1979) showed that the larger the network, the greater the chance of finding at least one member able to provide resource (information, labor, inputs like seed etc to their members). In addition, the larger the network size the greater the chance that several individuals possess the same resource, thereby avoiding the need to refer constantly to the same individual for resource (information, labor, inputs like seed etc). Wellman has also demonstrated that the more the members of a network are interconnected (network density), the greater the chance of similarity of the resources they exchange among themselves. In a dense network, exchanges occur more easily and are better co-ordinate, although the 50
accessible resource may be less varied. The inverse is true for networks with weak interconnections among members.
According to Narayan (2000), strong networks and
membership based organizations extended beyond the family and immediate community are essential to help poor people gain access to other assets and resources.
2.6.1 Gender, social networks and technology In the developing world as a whole, women play the primary role in food production. Rural women, who undertake a major proportion of farm work, are responsible for family food security and home production, and are often involved in postharvest processing and marketing. However they often have lower levels of social status and economic security in the family (Padmaja et.al 2006, Bantilan and Padmaja, 2008). It is realized that, in order to raise the agricultural output and productivity on a sustainable basis in the developing countries, large-scale adoption of new technologies is very essential. It is also widely realized that these technologies have to address to the needs of not only the male farmer in perspective but also incorporate the requirements and adaptability of women in the farm sector.
There is an increasing evidence that gender may make a difference in economic circumstances (Molinas 1998). Kabeer (1996) argues that local gender relations play a significant role in mediating the translation of economic benefits derived from technological uptake into individual well being. Women are generally poorer than men, because they lack the range of assets and access to entitlements, which male members of their households tend to enjoy. Gender studies have highlighted entrenched inequalities in control over assets, gender discrimination in labor markets, and lack of voice in the power struggle in controlling resource allocation as the main reason for women’s vulnerability. Gender research has also created awareness of the feminization of poverty (Jackson 1995, Kabeer 1995, Lockwood 1995) and the often vulnerable situation of female headed or female maintained households (Buvinic 1993, Buvinic and Gupta 1994). An important dimension of vulnerability in marginal areas is a lack of power, voice and social networks that can help the poor to access resources, institutions, technology and markets. Hence this review places emphasis on the exploration of effectiveness of social networks by gender for individual empowerment and poverty reduction in the rural area.
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The intersection of gender and class has become an important theoretical and empirical problem in feminist scholarship. However, it is often approached by studying women, fixed in particular class locations, giving the impression that gender and class are static markers on the social landscape. By concerning herself with migration and class formation at a particular juncture of social development, Sharma (1986) provides insight into gender and class as processes in a dynamic social life. Sharma has written a theoretically rich ethnography of women's work and urban life in Shimla, North India. She attempts to explore the nature of women's household work in a modern Indian city and show how it contributes to the maintenance, and sometimes mobility, of the household. Sharma places the household at the center of her analysis for several reasons. The household is a switching point where internal and external relations come together. To various degrees, members of the same household have a stake in and contribute to the construction of each other's networks. Because administrative workers in Shimla may simultaneously occupy various positions in the agrarian mode of production, the household provides the means by which resources in one structure may be mobilized to create resources in another. Sharma's Marxism defines the household as a locus of social (re)production, and her feminism recognizes asymmetry of rewards and disunity of interests among household members. Because household members may have different interests and class positions, the household becomes the arena in which these different interests or positions are mediated. Individual household members, in this case women, are representatives of household units and as household service workers are conduits in the social networks necessary for resource mobilization.
Women's unpaid labor in the home ensures the survival and social mobility of households, yet is virtually ignored by researchers, who often define work as material activities. Her study also is an important contribution on the emerging literature on the informal sector (poorly paid or unremunerated labor) in developing economies. Sharma examines women across income levels who have at least one child at home. A secondary sample of unmarried women and male migrants supplements her basic sample. The women of Shimla view housework as a natural but burdensome task. At the same time, household service work has a high social value, particularly in the cultivation and maintenance of socioeconomic relationships both in and outside of the household. Women maintain connections with their neighbors and other female household members that ease the burdens of the day. A second type of household service work is resource management, or the planning and allocation of money within the household. Here, too, women play an active role. In addition, many women manage rural 52
property while their husbands work in urban jobs. However, management rarely means control for women. Household work also entails supervising the children’s' education. Sharma argues that many women face a triple burden: work outside the home, housework, and the social service work that goes along with the above activities. It is the women who maintain information networks for marriage matchmaking, finding housing and jobs, hiring servants, and providing for child care. They also maintain social relationships with kin, neighbors, and friends-in the workplace and through entertaining.
Sharma's approach also acknowledges that personal resources, such as education, may be collective resources, and individuals actively involved in resource mobilization may mobilize resources for one, several, or all members of a collectivity, not necessarily oneself. However, her approach does not assume equitable distribution of those resources within the household or equitable reward to its members.
Doss and Morris (2001) in their study on adoption of improved maize technology in Ghana basically suggests that gender-linked differences in the adoption of modern maize varieties and chemical fertilizer are not attributable to inherent characteristics of the technologies themselves but instead result from gender-linked differences in access to key inputs.
Westermann et al (2005) contribute to an improved understanding of the gender aspects of social capital manifested in groups for natural resource management (NRM). The authors investigated how gender differentiated social groups differ in their activities and outcomes for NRM. A total of 46 men’s, mixed, and women’s groups were analyzed in 33 rural programs in 20 countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Significant gender differences were found in relation to group maturity and NRM achievements and approaches as well as important differences in experiences of collaboration and capacity to manage conflict. Overall, it was found that collaboration, solidarity, and conflict resolution all increase in groups where women are present. In addition, norms of reciprocity are more likely to operate in women’s and mixed groups. Similarly, the capacity for self-sustaining collective action increased with women’s presence and was significantly higher in the women’s groups. The results demonstrate the importance of gender analysis for collective NRM and particularly the role of women for collaboration in and sustainability of NRM groups.
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The analysis of different and complementary roles of women and men in social capital formation and the potential consequences of such differences for collective NRM in this study were guided by the proposition that women tend to build more relational social capital than men, that is, informal social relations and networks based on norms of collaboration and conflict management. The reason for this, it is argued, is that women supposedly value collaboration, altruism, and conflict resolution more highly. Gender differences in stocks and use of relational social capital may translate into different NRM outcomes because norms of reciprocity facilitate collective management of natural resources by providing trust. Trust and reciprocity among actors at a personal and generalized level facilitate information exchange (and thus limit transaction costs) and so collaboration needed for collective action is enhanced. Collaboration which values solidarity and generosity may allow access to resources and discourage stakeholders from applying certain management practices that would affect others negatively. Women’s relational social capital and values which support solidarity with other women may enable them to organize more effective collective action than men. Gender differences were found in the frequency of collaboration, solidarity, and capacity to manage conflict where the data reveal an effect on group behavior of the presence of women in groups. It was found that collaboration, solidarity and conflict resolution all increased with women’s presence in the groups, which is congruent with Molinas’ (1998) and Odame’s (2002) finding that women’s participation increased cooperation. The findings suggest that norms of reciprocity are more likely to operate in groups where women are present and that this may be the result of women’s work responsibilities that rely on frequent collaboration. Similarly, the capacity for self-sustaining collective action increased with women’s presence and was significantly higher in the women’s groups. The analysis demonstrated a significant relationship between (a) maturity of groups and gender and (b) NRM approaches/ achievements and gender characteristics of groups. This result supports the finding from another study that maturity of groups is positively related to performance and management of natural resources (Pretty, 2003; Pretty & Ward, 2001). At the same time, it would be cautious about concluding that a more regenerative approach to NRM found in women’s groups compared with men’s more reactive approach is a direct result of higher awareness of ecological principles. This situation more likely reflects women’s potentially higher dependency on common property resources and their limited access to external inputs. The analysis provides clear evidence of the vital role of gender analysis for collective NRM and points to the importance of diagnosing gender 54
differences in social capital in a community or a group before intervention in order to match the existing level of social capital with the need to organize for specific collective activities.
Based on the above findings, it will be important to examine how different gender-related needs, responsibilities, and endowments, and in particular the gender division of labor, affect commitment to norms of reciprocity and collaboration. It is also recommended that a careful analysis of the potentials for the spillover effect of gender- differentiated social capital be undertaken. This will help identify ways for taking advantage of the existing levels of social capital to strengthen the organization of collective NRM. Such an analysis gives ample attention to the private interest of women and considers whether and how collective action represents a resource from which different types of classes of women will benefit in different ways.
Women may depend more on some forms of relational social capital simply because they are excluded from male dominated formal networks and organized power structures where institutional social capital is built and exercised. Moreover, informal networks are needed to cope with multiple responsibilities for household provisioning, reproduction, childcare, and risk management. Women’s capacity for organizing effective collective action may not be related to, or depend on gender differences in the values, attitudes, and informal relations that constitute relational social capital but on their opportunity for participation and even the sheer pressure of their workload. Based on the finding that mixed groups are an important type of organization where women’s presence has an effect on group performance, it is suggested that attention should be exercised in forming and supporting mixed groups to ensure that women are given both a clear voice and decision-making power. In mixed groups, women and men are likely to have different needs, capabilities, and preferences, and to the extent that these differences are respected, the presence of women in mixed groups is likely to raise the level of maturity and solidarity in the groups and so improve NRM outcomes. This would imply that an important focus of gender-sensitive capacity building and interventions to promote collective action would be to ensure that there is appropriate opportunity for women to participate.
Consequently, it is recommended that interventions to promote collective action for NRM directly address the gender composition of group organization, and in particular the groups’ relational and institutional social capital, and any norms, rules, or networks that exclude 55
women from participation and decision making. Such a recommendation necessarily implies readiness to challenge the structural positions from which women participate. To do so, it is critical to diagnose the power relations among men and women and comprehend their patterns of interdependence to be able to influence and facilitate gender relations and dynamics in collective action groups. Likewise, it is essential to assess the meaning of participation to women and men and understand better the dynamics and processes of how they draw on collective action resources in gender-differentiated groups.
Further research could usefully examine these issues to flesh out the dynamics underlying the findings that the presence of women in NRM groups tends to increase their effectiveness. Based on literature review, it is suggested that understanding gender relations is important for the sustainability of groups and how they may improve NRM. However, the question about how to tailor programs to build collective action based on recognition of gender differences in social capital remains unanswered. One implication is that in cases where women are high on relational social capital, but weak on institutional social capital, and where men have strong institutional social capital but are short of relational social capital, their capacity to organize effective group processes for collective action in NRM will vary.
Agrawal B (2000) in several studies demonstrates how institutions for natural resource management (such as community forestry groups), which appear to be participative, equitable and efficient, can be found lacking on all three counts from a gender perspective. Her paper on “Conceptualising environmental collective action: why gender matters” examines possible gender differences in social networks, values and motivations. Although the paper has little evidence to suggest that women are inherently more conservationist than men, it throws light on the distinctness of women's social networks embodying prior experience of successful cooperation, their higher dependence on these networks (as also on the commons in general), and their potentially greater group homogeneity relative to men. The above findings provide an important (and largely ignored) basis for organizing sustainable environmental collective action.
Gender differences in social capital imply that some form of intervention is required to construct institutional social capital in the form of enforceable rules, procedures, and sanctions that can be used by women, or alternatively that relational capital is built in the form of enhanced trust, norms of collaboration, and conflict management for men. 56
Westermann concludes that capacity building and interventions to promote collective action for NRM need to be gender differentiated.
When access to formal financial institutions is limited, social networks are crucial to obtaining access to resources such as credit. In his review of the evidence on social capital and access to credit, van Bastelaer (2003) highlights the important role that social networks and social cohesion play in informal credit associations and microfinance projects. In a number of projects, such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the vast majority of borrowers are women. Repayment in many of these projects relies on the extent and strength of personal relationships among borrowers. The role of social networks in obtaining credit is largest for the poorest borrowers, and women are often more likely to be poor. The social cohesion of groups appears to be related to success in repayment rates, but social relations outside the groups also matter. Some studies show that social networks are crucial to repayment of loans when borrowers rely on kin and friends to help with repayment, rather than fellow borrowers.
The use of social networks to access resources such as credit is particularly important for female-headed households, which can be marginalized in their access to collective action and social networks. For example, Grootaert and Narayan (2000) find evidence that in Bolivia, female-headed households are less likely to participate in collective activities. They find a large, negative, and significant relationship between being a female-headed household and the number of times a household participated in collective action during the year, controlling for a number of other determinants of collective action. To the extent that social networks are important in obtaining access to credit, as van Bastelaer argues, this suggests that femaleheaded households may be especially disadvantaged in their access to economic opportunities.
Reid and Salmen (2000) show how lack of attention to social capital among women can weaken development projects and lead to poorer outcomes. Their study of six villages in Mali examines how trust between farmers, extension agents, agricultural contact groups and the wider community affects agricultural production. Their research indicates that social cohesion is the most critical input to collective action and improved agricultural outcomes and that women and women's associations are an important source of social cohesion. Women spend time together in common work areas and belong to traditional associations and networks that cross the lines of conflict in some fractured communities. Nonetheless, in the 57
villages Reid and Salmen studied, agricultural extension agents often overlooked these networks. Ministry policies often discouraged extension agents from working with women, and male extension agents seemed to lack awareness of women's activities and how they might differ between villages. Reid and Salmen suggest that where the potential of women's networks is recognized and capitalized upon, development is more likely to become a reality.
In many rural areas, where small-scale agriculture is practiced, gender differences have been found to have a significant impact on resource allocation and productivity in agriculture (Alderman et al., 2003).Gender inequalities almost always favor men, with women often being disadvantaged both in the control over household assets (Fafchamps and Quisumbing 2003) and in the division of responsibilities in the household and in the community. Even when a woman heads the household and is in charge of household resources, gender differences emerge across female-headed households and their male-headed counterparts. Significant heterogeneity among female-headed households has also been highlighted in the literature implying differential provision of resources and their use among rural settings (Peters, 1983).
For women to build and maintain a social network is also costly in terms of both time and other resources imposing a barrier to social capital accumulation (Dasgupta, 2005). Women typically have a high opportunity cost of time that reduces their incentives to participate in certain social networks (Meinzen-Dick and Zwarteveen, 2003). Women have been found to join groups that mobilize fewer resources than men because they are resource-constrained (Maluccio et al., 2003). Gender norms in the community may also exclude women from social capital- enhancing activities, such as drinking clubs.
Women are consequently more likely to rely on kin and social networks for access to resources. Because men and women belong to different social networks, the economic and social consequences of technological choices and developmental interventions impact their social networks and associations in different ways. Traditionally, women are responsible for household welfare and child rearing. Reliance on informal exchange networks is necessary among women and their households to share resources, stabilize incomes, and reduce risks. For women in female-headed households networks are also important for their economic activities (Padmaja et al., 2006).
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Several studies have found that men and women’s personal networks differ in composition, although they are similar in size. Men’s networks tend to be more formal since men are more often involved in formal employment. Male networks include more co-workers and fewer kin than women’s networks (Moore, 1990). Arce and Long (1994) states how farmers’ wives also form their own networks: “knowledge is assembled by women farmers through combining informal networks with the membership of a multiplicity of women’s organizations set up to represent them. The knowledge network builds bridges between women’s life worlds and cross-cuts official women’s organizations “representing” them. These informal ties function as binding elements in the lives of rural women, often more than do formal organizations. However, the experiences that women gain from participating in official organizations feed into their existing interpersonal networks, thus generating a complex and changing category of loyalties, affiliations and perceptions.”
Duvvury (1989) in a review of literature on research on women in agriculture highlights that there is considerable literature on the areas covered by green revolution but very limited is known about the role of women in dryland agriculture. In the context of the new agricultural technology, Saradamoni (1987) has highlighted the fluidity of the gender division of tasks. The point to be noted here is that her observation remains true even in the present times and more micro-level studies to understand the gender division of labor, the stresses in employment/unemployment as well as the cultural barriers in such cases are needed.
2.7 Review of methodologies to study social networks In the past twenty years many sociologists have worked to expand network concepts into a structural formulation. Greatly increasing the scope of and claims of network analysis, they seek to treat all social structures as social networks. In the words of Boorman and Breiger (1976), ‘the presently existing, largely categorical descriptions of social structures have no solid theoretical grounding; furthermore, network concepts may provide the only way to construct a theory of social structure.’ The diversity of contemporary research is a result of sociologists linking network concepts with a variety of technical and substantive concerns. These include the works of : Simmel (1971) with an emphasis on the pattern of ties affecting 59
social behavior, Freeman (1979), who used a
sociometrically based desire to measure
network properties quantitatively; an epidemiological and communications interest in resource diffusion process (Coleman, Katz and Menzel, 1966; Rogers 1979); and a contemporary bent in mathematical reasoning (White 1965; Lorrain and White 1971).
Steeped in quantitative traditions, many sociologists have sought to describe the structure of network as precisely as possible. Social network analysts have had two orientations: a) studying the forms of network patterns rather than the content, arguing similar forms have similar behavioral consequences in a wide range of contexts. Two schools of thought are existing – i) interpersonal triads are looked at as the building blocks of social structure, and ii) local structures can be studied only in the context of overall structures, using network analysis to map the overall role structure of a social system (as in Boorman and White, 1976) b) Using a variety of network-analytic concepts and techniques to address the substantive research questions that preoccupy most sociologists. In this, while some researches analyze whole networks – all the ties of a certain kind among all the members of a population – to study the underlying structural patterns of links between large groups such as corporations (Levine, 1972; Berkowitz, 1982), others analyze personal networks – to study how the composition, content and configuration of ties affect the
flow of resources to focal individuals (Gottlieb, 1981; Wellman, 1981a).
By and large, many scholars have been concerned with the effects of network properties on the integration of large-scale social systems.
The application of these methods in real world situations is seen in studies analyzing social networks from different perspectives. A few approaches are cited here which formed the basis for the methodology for field work. Paulo and Barrett (2006) used an approach quite similar to the one suggested by Granovetter (1973) in sampling social networks and studying them. Individuals who are part of a random sample are randomly matched with other individuals from the same sample and asked about their willingness to establish a link with the random match. A similar approach was used by Goldstein and Udry (1999) also. Using original data on real social relations, Paulo and Barrett (2006) demonstrate that these data prove statistically equivalent to data on the same respondents’ actual social networks. Similar approaches have been applied by Erickson, Nosanchuck and Lee (1981) and Erickson and Nosanchuck (1983). 60
Another approach cited in the literature is to identify survey respondents’ actual networks by the set of links existing within a random sample of the relevant population. An alternative approach is to randomly select some individuals and use respondent-driven sampling, augmenting the random sample with the individuals belonging to the social networks of the initial (randomly selected) respondents. This provides a reliable characterization of the respondents’ networks, although at the cost that inference about the (typically more interesting) characteristics of the population is possible only under certain circumstances (analyzed, for example, in Heckathorn (2002). and would require, in any case, additional sampling waves such that the bias due to the non-random generation of each wave after the first is finally eliminated
A third approach to the empirical identification of social networks is suggested by Goldstein and Udry (1999). Starting with a random sample of individuals from a population of interest, they identified social relations within the random sample through a series of hypothetical questions intended to elicit the willingness of each respondent to enter into some specific relation with a match randomly selected from the same random sample. Some examples of this approach of studying links is the study by Santos and Barrett (2005) focusing on information search in rural Ghana and Santos and Barrett (2006) study data on insurance networks elicited using this approach in southern Ethiopia.
A detailed elaboration on the methods of sampling social networks, network data and analysis is presented in Appendix I.
2.8
Mathematical foundations of social network concept
The three major foundations of network methods include graph theory, statistical and probability theory and algebraic models. Early sociometricians discovered graph theory and distributions for random graphs. Graph theory provides both an appropriate representation of social network and a set of concepts that can be used to study formal properties of social networks. Statistical theory became quite important as people began to study reciprocity and mutuality. Statistical models are used to test theoretical propositions about networks. Algebraic models have been widely used to study multi-relational networks. Sociometry is the science and art of measuring relationships and was developed by psychotherapist Jacob L. 61
Moreno in his studies of the relationship between social configurations or structures and psychological well-being. Jacob Moreno defined sociometry as "the inquiry into the evolution and organization of groups and the position of individuals within them."
2.9 Summary From the review of literature it can be summarized that while the structural –functional theorists looked at social networks as an explanation of how norm consensus and norm directed behavior was achieved, the exchange theorists and conflict theorists saw profitmaximization as the goal of individual actors while interacting with others. Essentially, network analysis focuses on patterns of relations between actors. Both relations and actors can be defined in many ways, depending on the substantive area of inquiry. For example, network analysis has been used to study the structure of affective links between persons, flows of commodities between organizations, shared members between social movement organizations, and shared needles between drug users. What is central is an emphasis on the structure of relationality, which serves to link micro- and macro-level processes.
One of the most helpful developments for women working in agriculture today is the advent of women’s agricultural networks. These networks are for both women who own and operate farms and farm-related businesses and those who are a source of labor for the farm. The aim is sharing of knowledge, experiences, and resources. Farming networks can create a community of knowledge exchange as well as a source of moral support for people who may be outside mainstream agriculture.
Networks can also function as learning groups and bring households together to cooperate and experiment with ideas, technology and investments, such as high value crops, Bt-crops and also small enterprises. As these networks expand, new social movements may begin. There are many such examples which can prove this point. One such example is the coming together of women in some villages to ban liquor sales in the villages. Another example is the famous Chipko movement where some villages have even joined together voluntarily to take action against environmental damage.
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From a review of literature, it is observed that social networks are important for at least three reasons. First, the social network in which an actor is embedded constitutes an important aspect of his or her social context. It has been argued in the literature that an understanding of networks is essential if we are to understand action in relation to its social context. Network ties link actors to each other as well as to groups, cultural resources, neighbourhoods, and communities, and hence they play a potentially significant role in structuring opportunities and constraints. Second, social networks are essential for understanding social dynamics. Social action is interactive: one person’s action changes the context for those to whom they are connected. In other words, the dynamics of action are bound up with connectedness in networks; indeed, social networks are thought of the “wiring” for socio-cultural processes. Third, understanding the structure of networks is essential to understand how local processes cumulate into community/state/regional level outcomes. The structure of networks and the dynamics of local processes can have a dramatic impact on how locally interactive, contextdependent actions lead to outcomes at higher more aggregated levels (eg at the level of communities, or populations).
As a way of closing this discussion, I would say that it is now increasingly recognized that information on agricultural innovations diffuses through social networks rather than being freely available in the village. Social capital plays a crucial mediating role in the process of technology uptake in rural farm communities. The differentiation of the social networks by gender will help researchers and development practitioners gain greater insight into how gender inequalities influence the effectiveness of social networks in facilitating technological exchange and sharing including information and knowledge.
The aim of this literature survey was to gain an enriched understanding of how social networks have been studied by different research in different contexts and scope. From sections 2.5 and 2.6, it is very clear that there is still dearth of studies on technology adoption and diffusion in the SAT, what are the determinants, and how adoption decisions are made and the impacts of the new technological innovations on the rural men and women inhabiting the SAT. Likewise the literature on social networks, gender and technology adoption that is presented clearly points out that such studies are not existing for the SAT regions, in the context of the dynamic nature of agriculture in these regions as well as the changing institutional, social and policy environment. This literature reviews helps us identify the gaps with reference to our understanding of technology diffusion and social networks in 63
agriculture, and why it is important to study these, especially using a gender perspective. Though there have been several advances in this area, there is still a lacuna in the methodological aspects of studying social networks. There are very few or limited studies that focus on the individuals’ behavior in the context of multiple and overlapping social networks and, in particular, to acknowledge the agency of the individuals embedded in social networks and to understand the dynamics of network formation by gender. The learning from the literature review is useful to conceptualize the study on social networks in agricultural communities living in the semi-arid tropics of India.
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Chapter 3: How I went about networking Methodology for the study I outline the methodology for understanding village dynamics and social relationships and networks in this chapter. The contributions of my research is to develop an approach to support systematic analysis of social networks that will enable researchers to better understand the structure of networks and the social groups within. Through a social network analysis I focus on uncovering the patterning of people's interaction as these patterns are important for the individuals who display them. It will not only study the behavior of the individual at the micro level, but also the pattern of relationships (network structure) at the macro level, and the interactions between the two. The analysis of the interaction structures that is involved in this analysis will be an important element in the analysis of the micro±macro link, the way in which individual behavior and social phenomena are connected with one another.
My study establishes the network architecture of men and women in two villages in rural semi-arid tropics in India and thereby measures social connectedness by mapping farmer networks within the villages and outside.
65
It provides answers to questions such as: 1.
Why do members of the community want to organize/mobilize into groups?
2.
Why do members of the community organize themselves using existing groups (eg caste groups)?
3.
Who interacts with whom?
4
How do networks operate?
5.
What is the outcome?
6.
How do networks affect outcomes?
7.
Are the well connected well off?
I developed the methodology for understanding village dynamics and social relationships and networks after a critical review of the past studies and literature. In the past twenty years many sociologists have worked to expand network concepts into a structural formulation. Greatly increasing the scope of and claims of network analysis, they seek to treat all social structures as social networks.
The diversity of contemporary research is a result of
sociologists linking network concepts with a variety of technical and substantive concerns. It can be summed up that steeped in quantitative traditions, many sociologists have sought to describe the structure of network as precisely as possible. While some researches analyze whole networks – all the ties of a certain kind among all the members of a population – to study the underlying structural patterns of links between large groups such as corporations (Levine, 1972, Berkowitz, 1982), others analyze personal networks – to study how the composition, content and configuration of ties affect the flow of resources to focal individuals (Gottlieb, 1981, Wellman, 1981). By and large, many scholars have been concerned with the effects of network properties on the integration of large-scale social systems. Based on the literature review and expert consultations, I undertook a complete census of the two study villages to capture village dynamics and social relationships both within and outside the villages using a Q2 approach i.e., quantitative as well qualitative data was collected on the major transactions – economic, socio-cultural-political and technology related – from all adult members in the village.
With this brief background to the study, I now proceed to elaborate the methodology that I have used for studying whole networks including the framework for the study, selection of study locations and data collection, and analytical tools that I have used to analyze whole networks. 66
3.1 Framework linking social networks to technological change I am influenced by the study by Bantilan and Padmaja (2008) which analyzed the process of technology uptake by systematically probing through the various stages of the adoption– empowerment pathway using a social lens focusing on gender dimensions and social capital. I use this as a framework for my study and this is depicted in Figure 3.1. In this study, the process stimulating gender-equitable change and empowerment is examined through a sequential analysis of quantitative and qualitative assessment in the study village. Phase 1:
the early stage of technology adoption where lack of collective action is a constraining factor in technology uptake;
Phase 2:
a learning phase looking at the gender dimensions of technology uptake when the constraint is lifted through social capital build-up and is seen as a mediating factor effectively facilitating technology adoption;
Phase 3:
stage of individual and community empowerment achieved through social capital build-up by developing networks and groups, as a result of technology innovation and vice-versa, whereby even marginalized groups gain better access to resources, information, knowledge and some opportunities for political participation
Appealing to the concept of social capital as networks and relationships, I propose to further research the types of social networks that marginalized groups associate with, the networks that powerful groups have access to, and the relationship between the two groups. Establishing the network architecture (including networks developed either through formal organizations, kinship groups, neighborhoods networks, work groups, self-help groups, or informal interactions), I envisage to look into the role of social networks in technology adoption, and diffusion and the effects of these networks in empowering men and women in rural communities.
At this point, I go a step backward to explain the conceptual framework linking social capital theory and the social networks component in it. Social capital theory indicates that the economic function of social capital is to reduce transaction costs associated with coordination mechanisms like contracts, hierarchies, bureaucratic rules, and the like (Fukuyama, 2001). This leads us to the identification of an important feature of social capital - the potential for 67
information exchange that inheres in social relations. Information is important in providing a basis for action but the acquisition of information is costly requiring attention and time, which is most of the time in scarce supply (Coleman, 1999). It is here that I present the conceptual framework (figure 3.2) that illustrates how the household asset portfolio, social capital and networks are interlinked, with special reference to the semi-arid tropics. The respective capital endowments - different forms of capital (natural, financial, human, physical, and social) determines the incidence of vulnerability of a household. Moreover, as cited in the literature, different forms of capital can substitute for and complement each other at least to a certain degree (Grootaert, 1998; Robison et al, 2002). There is also growing empirical evidence – particularly from the rural sector in several developing and a few transition countries – suggesting that social capital can complement other forms of capital in some ways and help households to overcome deficiencies of other forms of capital (Annen, 2001, Fafchamps and Minten, 2002). There have been studies such as Mosley and Verschoor (2005) that concluded from their research on experimental insurance schemes that social capital can be seen as a substitute to formal insurance. Similar to this finding is another good example in rural finance - the Women Self Help Groups (SHGs) in India where social capital (through their memberships in the SHGs) is used to overcome deficiencies in the endowment of physical capital, in this case agricultural land, the titles of which are not in the name of women. Their memberships in SHGs is taken as collateral for formal bank loans. Here, the borrowers’ reputation, or the social (and political) networks to which they belong, replace traditional physical collateral and this has been confirmed by other researchers like Bastelaer van (2003) and Panjaitan-Drioadisuryo and Cloud (1999). Similarly, looking at the poor from a multi-dimensional perspective of poverty, it has been observed by researchers undertaking micro-level village studies in the semi-arid tropics that the poor are also managers of a complex asset portfolio and that social capital is an important component of this portfolio. This has also been concluded by Moser (1998) and Bebbington (1999) in their frameworks analyzing vulnerability in the African context. However, it is argued that the composition of this portfolio varies across space and also across different social, gender, and caste groups.
As can be deduced from figure 3.2, through its network component, social capital has a role in the access of households to productive resources, either through the resources directly embedded in the network, or through collective action. When rural people try to access 68
Source: Bantilan and Padmaja (2008)
Figure 3.1. Framework linking social networks to technological change
Source: Adapted from Thomas Dufhues et.al 2006
Figure 3.2. Conceptual framework linking livelihood assets, social capital and social networks 69
resources, they do so through engaging in relationships with other actors. Indeed, access to other actors is conceptually prior to access to material resources in the determination of livelihood strategies (Bebbington, 1999). Focus group discussion with key respondents also points out that in the village economies of India, knowing the social game is crucial to understanding the functioning of other important areas, such as political, institutional and economic. For example, in the study by Bantilan and Padmaja (2008), the transfer of knowledge about adequate natural resource management techniques for groundnut cultivation depended upon, among other things, the social relationships that cultivators had with cultivators, early adopters and innovators. This study also revealed that promoting social capital through group action may also push access to productive resources, which in return can support sustainable land use through increased agricultural productivity and can thus contribute to natural resource protection. The interviews with formal and informal leaders in the village – both men and women - also revealed that without access to social networks and their inherent relevant information sharing, participation in any decision making – at the farm as well as household - is limited, biased, and or may be not possible as well.
3.2 Selection of study locations I have conducted this research in two villages in the heartland of semi-arid tropics (SAT) of India
– namely Aurepalle village in Andhra Pradesh State and Kanzara village in
Maharashtra State, where the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-AridTropics (ICRISAT) has been conducting village-level surveys (VLS) for about thirty years.
ICRISAT is collecting data on rural households on all aspects related to farming, village, and household economies in the semi-arid tropics. 240 households (from six villages in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra) form a longitudinal panel database for the period 1975-84. After specific surveys conducted in the 1990s, the second generation VLS started in 2001 and data collection is still continuing with enhanced focus now spanning 42 villages in SAT India, Eastern India and Bangladesh. A more detailed description about the ICRISAT village level studies and the data base is in Appendix II. Individual modules have been recently introduced to investigate the role of social networks and safety nets in promoting welfare and securing livelihoods of the villagers. 70
I present an elaborate characterization and profile of the study region (SAT) and the villages in chapter 4. The two villages are good examples to study, compare and contrast social networks, relationships and linkages in the rural communities. The rich background information on these households and the story of their previous generations, linked to new gender-based data collected through my enquiry on social networks and linkages, allows me to determine facilitating mechanisms for people’s participation or exclusion from institutions of collective action. The details of the data that is collected and analyzed is described below.
3.3 Sources of data and data collection techniques The methods employed in collecting data for this study are 1) village censuses using semi structured interviews and questionnaires for mapping social networks at the individual and household level; 2) ranking of individuals identified by community members to understand the role that key individual(s) play in mobilizing community members to cooperate and cope during emergencies and shocks; 3) tapping the multigenerational long-term data on agricultural and economic change in these regions through the ICRISAT village-level studies (VLS) ; 4. Using district-level data to understand changes at the macro-level and, 5. social analysis using qualitative tools to understand how social networks function in technology diffusion as well as empowerment of women.
Based on the review of methodologies for studying social networks and expert consultations with Drs Hans Binswanger and Mark Rosenzweig I decided to use a village census approach to capture village dynamics and social relationships both within and outside the villages. The village census instrument used in the ICRISAT VLS census rounds until 2007 was examined in detail. The VLS census instrument covered vital statistics on demographic, landholding and asset details of the entire population of the village. Based on the recommendations of the experts I methodologically enhanced the 2007 village census instrument to capture village dynamics by including key variables measuring relationships, key transactions and networks among individuals/households in the village. A survey instrument was developed to collect information on the major transactions – economic, socio-cultural-political and technology related – from all adult members in the village. The questionnaire was implemented after
71
conducting Focus Group Meetings (FGM) and finalization through pilot testing. The Census PLUS questionnaire as it is called is presented in Appendix III
The total population size covering both the villages is 729 households with 3058 respondents being interviewed (Table 3.1). As indicated above, all adult members of the households are covered in this data collection. The questionnaire documents all the major transactions each individual member in the household has had during the year 2007-2008.
Table 3.1. Total number of households interviewed for the study, 2008-09 Sl.No
Village
Total number of
Number of respondents surveyed
households surveyed
(> 14 years of age)
1
Aurepalle
4101
1868
2
Kanzara
319
1190
Total
729
3058
1. This is for Aurepalle village only and does not include its hamlet villages Nallavaripalle and Turkalakunta
To capture the social relationships, the respondent was asked for the most important people in the village/outside the village, whom the respondent has approached for some kind of transactions and the groups/organizations which are a source of information or help to him / her.
Based on the outcome of the focus group discussions, I classified all the transaction into three main categories: 1. Economic transactions: these include borrowing money, lending money, land transactions, employment source and any others. I was interested to know the names of the people and not the amount borrowed or lent 2. Socio-cultural-political transactions: include
gifts/remittances, monetary help or
information during marriage of kith and kin, religious advise, information about government programs or political information, information
regarding education,
health, nutrition and any others. Again as reiterated above I was interested to know the names of the people with whom the respondent has a tie. 72
3. Technological transactions: related to agricultural technology and include in-kind transactions regarding agricultural technology (eg. seeds, sharing equipment); information/advice regarding new agricultural technology, practices, pest & disease, fertilizer use, etc, Labor sharing for agricultural work and others like household transactions in consumer and producer durables, financial assets, market transactions.
The full name of the person with whom the respondent has a transaction is recorded including the family name (surname). If the transaction was with a group (like SHG, Farmers group, youth club etc), the name of the group as well as the name of the person contacted in the group is recorded wherever possible. The relationship of the person to the respondent is recorded namely by blood or marriage. If a person is from the same village, the census number and the individual ID code is recorded, if the person is from outside the village then the place, distance from the village and the caste of the person is recorded. The strength of relationship - whether it is strong - was decided through the frequency of interactions, and can always be relied on in times of help/need, friendship bonding. Finally a summary is generated from the responses given to record the most important or top 3 people from the ones the respondent will approach in times of need, or emergency. By emergency or need the reference is to a financial or economic emergency, illness of family members, loss of crop, legal guidance and advice, and any other problem which is important to the respondent but is temporary in nature.
The above information was collected through survey interviews. An analysis of the various transactions is done to document the network architecture as well as understand especially the spread and diffusion of innovations. In addition to this, data was also collected through: a. focus groups meeting with men and women farmers in the two study locations to understand important transactions that people have in these two villages. Qualitative surveys in Aurepalle and Kanzara also aimed to understand the villagers’ perceptions about
Technological, policy-related changes and development programs in the village over the past two or three decades.
Which among these impacted them the most?
What are the different social network groups in the village?
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What role did social networks play in the adoption of these technologies and development interventions?
Based on the analysis of this information, in addition to documenting the network architecture, it was also decided to do two case studies: the Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in Aurepalle and how they influenced welfare outcomes; and the kinship networks in Kanzara for diffusion of a specific seed technology.
b. I conducted open ended interviews with some key respondents in both the study villages to get an in-depth understanding of how networks are functioning and the effects of networks in bringing about technological, economic and social-cultural changes. These include the money lender, a self-help group member, the village headman, a farmer with small land holdings, farmers from different social groups, and an innovator using new agricultural technology.
c. I also tapped the 4 decades of long term multigenerational VLS data to understand and document certain events and behavior as well as for characterization of the semi-arid tropics environment.
d. Lastly, I used data at the district level (eg. rainfall data, demographic data, area under different crops,) to characterize the study villages on some key variables.
I summarize my data collection techniques using the framework linking assets, social capital and social networks (figure 3.2) and depict the same pictorially in figure 3.3 which is self explanatory.
3.4 Quality of data collection ICRISAT’s presence in the study villages since 1975 through deployment of a resident investigator in the villages has helped me in collecting quality data. I was able to get the trust and confidence of the villagers as I had earlier experience in working in these two villages. My research interests on women as well as my skills in using social analysis tools have 74
greatly facilitated in collecting good data.
I trained the village investigators to collect
information on the social relationships and networks using the semi-structured questionnaire that I have developed. I also used a pictorial chart to explain to the respondents about the nature of the data being collected and why it is being collected (Appendix IV). This helped in guiding the respondents to comprehend the questions being asked and provide answers accordingly.
Figure 3.3. Framework linking theory on social capital and social networks, and data collection
3.5 Coding and validation of data; database construction A detailed registry of all individuals in the village and their immediate family and business associates is documented through the enhanced village censuses which captures key transactions and relationships within and outside the village. This allowed for innovative quantitative and qualitative analysis of social networks to capture socioeconomic-culturalpolitical village dynamics through network mapping using detailed village registries.
Coding and validation of the data was one of the most tedious and time consuming exercise. This was done in two parts. First, each individual member in the village is assigned a unique 75
ID. The next step was to assign the same unique ID in the transactions module/tab in which all the transactions of all the village members was entered. This exercise took a very long time as it involved validation of the data at the same time the unique id codes were being assigned. Similar coding is done for the transactions within the village as well as outside the village. As an example I present a sample data sheet in Appendix 3. This method of coding and assigning unique IDs was undertaken after serious and careful discussions with my research supervisors, and expert consultations with Drs Hans Binswanger and Victoria Reyes.
This method of assigning unique ID codes was considered the most important step to develop symmetric or asymmetric matrices using which the network maps can be drawn and the network architecture of different groups - based on gender, class and caste – can be documented. But again the question was why draw network maps? Can we not document the data in tabular form and draw inferences from them? Network maps provide a revealing snapshot of ecosystems - social system in this case - at a particular point in time. These maps can help answer many key questions in the community building process such as: •
What are the different connections in place?
•
Are the right connections in place? Are any key connections missing?
•
Who are playing leadership roles in the community for different purposes? Who is not, but should be?
•
Who are the innovators? Are ideas shared and acted upon?
A network map shows the nodes and links in the network. Nodes can be people, groups or organizations. Links can show relationships, flows, or transactions and is directional. A network map is an excellent tool for visually tracking the ties people have in their neighborhood. This information can also be used in designing strategies to create new connections. Network maps are also excellent ‘talking documents’ – visual representations that support conversations about possibilities. Transformation that leads to healthy communities is the result of many collaborations among network members. Researchers and social scientists describe this phenomenon – where local interactions lead to global patterns – as emergence- by understanding, and catalyzing connections. For example, knowing where the connections are, and are not, allows a community development organization to influence local interactions. This is particularly important in policy networks where key nodes play an important role in what flows throughout the network. Influencing a small number of well-
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connected nodes often results in better outcomes than trying to access the top person or calling on random players in the policy network.
They say the golden rule in Real Estate is: Location, Location, and Location. This rule also hold true in social networks. In real estate, location is determined by geography – physical location. In social networks, location is determined by our connections and the connections of those around us – our virtual location. Two social network measures, Betweenness and Closeness, are particularly revealing of a node’s advantageous or constrained location in a network. The values of both metrics are dependent upon the pattern of connections that a node is embedded in. Betweenness measures the control a node has over what flows in the network – how often is this node on the path between other nodes? Closeness measures how easily a node can access what are available via the network – how quickly can this node reach all others in the network? A combination where a node has easy access to others, while controlling the access of other nodes in the network, reveals high informal power.
3.6 Analytical tools I have used quantitative analysis software STATA to transform the raw data - which I have entered in MS-Office Excel software - into matrices depicting relationships and linkages. I used UCINET software developed by Borgatti et al (2006) to document the visual analysis as well as calculating some measures of centrality. I complemented the above analysis by descriptive analysis of these network maps to address some questions - for example how and why are social networks fragmented within communities? Which collective benefits could emerge from creation of new links? How do the networks affect outcomes, etc.
3.7 Key concepts I conclude this chapter by presenting some of the key concepts that I will be referring to in my results and discussion chapters. Actor: Social entities are referred to as actors. Actors are individuals, corporate, or collective social units (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). 77
Tie: Actors are linked to one another by social ties. A tie establishes a linkage between a pair of actors (Wasserman and Faust, 1994).
Dyads, triads, group and sub-group: Dyad is a linkage or relationship established between a pair of actors. Triad is a subset of three actors and the possible ties among them. A subgroup of actors can be any subset of actors and all ties among them. A group is a collection of all actors on which ties are to be measured (Wasserman and Faust, 1994).
Concept of poor: The definition of poor in this context is not just based on income or land holding status. It goes beyond cash income and asset position to also include sustainable livelihoods, their relative position in the society, and bargaining power.
Concept of Power: In sociology power is defined as the ability of an individual or group to fulfill its desires and implement its decisions and ideas. It involves the ability to influence as well control the behaviour of others even against their will. According to Giddens, the famous sociologist, power must be recognized as a primary concept in sociological analysis. It is potentially an aspect of all relationships. Power is an aspect of all areas of society and all institutions. Talcott Parsons defines power as a systems property - a capacity to achieve ends, whereas Mills viewed power as a relationship in which one side prevailed over the other. According to Max Weber power is a chance of man or men to realize their own will in a communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action. Marxian analysis rejects the view that power is a societal resource held in trust and directed by those in authority for the benefit of all. Instead power is seen to be held by a particular group in society at the expense of rest of the society. The source of power in society lies in the economic infrastructure and gradually the power of the ruling class extends beyond specific economic relations and pervades the entire superstructure.
Sociologists usually define power as the ability to impose one's will on others, even if those others resist in some way. The imposition need not involve coercion (force or threat of force); "power" used in the sociological sense is a separate concept from physical power or political power and in some ways is closer to what is called "influence" in everyday language. More generally, it can be defined as the real or perceived ability or potential to bring about significant change, usually in people’s lives through the actions of others. Power almost 78
always operates reciprocally, but usually not equally reciprocally. To control others, one must have control over things that they desire or need, but one can rarely exercise that control without a measure of reverse control - larger, smaller, or equal - also existing. For example, an employer usually wields considerable power over his workers because he has control over wages, working conditions, hiring and firing. The workers, however, hold some reciprocal power: they may leave, work more or less diligently, group together to form a union, and so on.
Because power operates both relationally and reciprocally, sociologists speak of the balance of power between parties to a relationship: all parties to all relationships have some power: the sociological examination of power concerns itself with discovering and describing the relative strengths: equal or unequal, stable or subject to periodic change. Sociologists usually analyse relationships in which the parties have relatively equal or nearly equal power in terms of constraint rather than of power. Even in structuralist social theory, power appears as a process, an aspect to an ongoing social relationship, not as a fixed part of social structure.
Concept of social class: A social class is a group of people that have similar social and economic status. At various times the division of society into classes has had various levels of support in law. At one extreme we find old Indian classes - castes, which one could neither enter after birth, nor leave. On the other extreme there exist classes in modern Western societies which appear very fluid and have little support in law. When sociologists speak of "class" they usually mean economically based classes in modern or near pre-modern society. In Marxist terms a class is a group of people with a specific relationship to the means of production (social production). Marxists explain history in terms of a war of classes between those who control social production and those who produce social goods. In the Marxist view of capitalism this is a conflict between capitalists (bourgeoisie) and workers (proletariat). Modern usage of the word "class" generally considers only the relative wealth of individuals or social groups, and not the ownership of the means of production.
In agrarian societies like India, class stratification is based on the ownership, use and control of land. Rudra (1978) contends, that there are only two classes in Indian agriculture - the class of big landowners and 'the class of agricultural labourers. Chakravarti (2001) defines 'agrarian class structure' based on access to land which is the principal means of production in an agrarian society. He further states – “the differential access to land – which governs 79
how one class relates to another - is the basis of relations of production or, in general terms, of class relations” (Chakravarti, 2001, pg 1449). It is also noted that many social changes such as land reforms, the marketability of land and the green revolution have changed stratification in India from cumulative to dispersed inequality (Beteille, 1974). In addition to this class relation, Beteille(1974) also regards caste relationships in agriculture as important as they are more visible, clearly defined and sharp as compared to class relations which are often overlapping and less visible than caste. People can move from one class category to the other over time. For the purpose of this study, I stratify my population based on class into 4 categories – large, medium, small and landless/marginal/labourers depending on the quantity of land held by each category.
3.8 Summary
In this chapter, I have described the methodology for this study including site selection and description, sampling, data collection techniques and analytical tools. I can confidently say that the new data that I have collected will offer a unique, gendered data set on social networks, linked to a unique 40-year household and individual panel data set. My future research interest will be to use this data to establish the ex-ante determinants of men and women’s differential and changing choices of participation in collective action.
In the next chapter, I present a detailed characterization of the SAT region as well as the profiles of the two study villages. The aim to have a full chapter on these is to document the context of the study properly and in detail as this will greatly enhance the interpretation of the research results and the implications from this research.
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Chapter 4: Profile of the study villages Agricultural technology diffusion has long been studied by development economists as well as sociologists and social anthropologists as is evident from the review of literature I presented in chapter 2. These studies have identified a number of determinants which enable as well as facilitate technology adoption and diffusion. Such studies are however, limited for the SAT. In India, and more so in the semi-arid tropical region, the heterogeneity in soil, climatic, resource endowments of the population as well as social and cultural diversity present challenge to the diffusion process. Government support through policies as well as agricultural extension is also limited in these regions. Hence availability of the new knowledge as well as access to resources that will help in this process is an important consideration. Therefore it is important to study technology diffusion and adoption issues in the SAT region of India.
With the acknowledgment of the importance of knowledge as well as resource access to agricultural technology diffusion, anything that increases the flow of information about the new technology to farmers would conceivably speed up the rate of technology adoption. One such mechanism that has been identified in the literature as increasing the availability of information to farmers and thereby speeding up the adoption process is social networks. Social networks, both formal and informal, are people-to-people networks along which information and knowledge about a new innovation flows between people within the 81
network. In the Indian SAT, the availability of seed, information about the new technology as well as access to resources like credit, other inputs can be facilitated through social networks and can be a major catalyst for adoption of a new technology. So far there are hardly any studies of social networks with respect to technology diffusion in the SAT. This research tries to fill this gap in the literature by studying different social networks of rural communities in India from a sociological point of view.
The location focus of this dissertation is the rural communities in the less-favored regions like the semi-arid tropics of India (SAT) who are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Let me illustrate what I mean by the less favoured regions and the semi-arid tropics and characterize the SAT before I profile the study villages.
4.1
Characterizing the Semi-Arid Tropics
It is now widely recognized that with the advent of green revolution, the last four decades have registered impressive gains in food production, food security and rural poverty reduction in India. The major driving force for this success is the increased intensification of agriculture - through the use of High Yielding Varieties (HYVs), intensive use of irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides - in more-favored high-potential zones of India like the IndoGangetic plains, Punjab and Haryana, coastal Andhra and coastal Tamil Nadu. Many regions in less-favored rainfed areas like much of the SAT have not benefited from this process of agricultural transformation. The semi-arid tropics region is characterized by highly variable, low-to-medium rainfall, harsh climate (extremes of weather), poor soils, and are further characterized by lack of irrigation. The mean annual rainfall in the SAT ranges from about 400 to 1200 mm but in general, the historical average annual rainfall in the SAT is below 700 mm. In agricultural policy terms, this region is considered to be a less favored area.
If we look at the SAT at a global level, it cover parts of 55 developing countries (See Appendix V). There are many definitions of the SAT (Ryan and Spencer, 2001 and Rao et.al, 2005), but I use the definition used by Ryan and Spencer (2001) wherein the SAT is defined using two parameters, ie, length of growing period (75–180 days) and mean monthly temperature (more than 18 0C). The concept of the growing period is essential to zoning by 82
agro-ecologies, and provides a way of including seasonality in land- resource appraisal. In many tropical areas, conditions are too dry during part of the year for crop growth to occur without irrigation, while in temperate climatic regimes crop production in winter is limited by cold temperatures. The growing period defines the period of the year when both moisture and temperature conditions are suitable for crop production and is normally indicated as ‘length of growing period or LGP’
By this definition, in India, the SAT extends over a total geographical area of nearly 1.2 million sq km, which constitutes 37.2% of the total geographical area of India. Walker and Ryan (1990) characterize much of peninsular India as SAT as well as large parts of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. The non-coastal parts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu on the Deccan Plateau comprise the heartland of the rainfed agricultural belt within the SAT.
As reiterated earlier, SAT regions are often characterized by scanty and uncertain rainfall, on which agricultural production largely depends, infertile, poor degraded soils, extreme poverty, and rapid population growth resulting in high population density and higher risks both bio-physical and socio-economic. Alongside high levels of risk and vulnerability, these regions are also deficient in soft (e.g., education and health services) and hard (e.g., roads and communication facilities) development infrastructure. The low productivity of rainfed agriculture and widespread poverty, changing globalized environment, scarcity of water, and degradation of productive resources (land and biodiversity) are threatening to further marginalize agriculture and livelihoods in the Indian SAT. These fragile ecosystems also experience a policy bias – i.e. policies favor the irrigated regions more than the SAT regions in terms of subsidies, minimum support prices for crops grown under irrigation as well as insurance and social safety nets (Rao et al, 2003, 2005).
Agriculture and livelihoods in the semi-arid tropics evolved under the influence of biotic (pest and disease incidence) and abiotic constraints. The most binding abiotic constraints are related to water scarcity and poor fertility of soils. The limited fresh water availability and seasonal variation and unreliability of rainfall particularly make agriculture in the semi-arid regions inherently risky. In rainfed systems of the SAT, the constant risk of drought increases the vulnerability of livelihoods and decreases human security. Since water is vital for crop growth, the low and unreliable rainfall in the SAT for rainfed agriculture makes drought 83
management a key strategy for agricultural development in these regions (Ryan and Spencer, 2001). The high costs of new water development and policy and market failures that encourage overuse of water resources in irrigated zones accentuate water problems in dry areas where supply is limited.
The major cropping pattern in these regions include coarse cereals and millets namely sorghum and pearl millet. In the black soil regions of Akola, cotton and cotton mixtures are the dominant crops. Alongside these crops, pulses like pigeonpea, black gram, green gram are gown as in intercrop ie., 1-2 rows of these pulse crops are planted at regular interval in the main crop. Most of these crops are subsistence crops and are rainfed (exception cotton) and require low input use as well. From the literature it can also be gleaned that the agricultural productivity of these crops is also low. Rainfed agricultural growth is nearly stagnant in the semiarid tropics, and Green Revolution technologies have had little impact on the crops grown in these regions (Kerr, 2000, Rao et al, 2005). This is because of uncertain rainfall, poor soils and other bio-physical constraints.
With respect to technology adoption in the SAT, alongside the bio-physical resources, the importance of social capital, perceived as a willingness and ability to work together (Parthasarathy and Chopde 2001), has been emphasized especially in case of technology options such as watersheds, irrigation management, and integrated pest management strategies. Earlier studies in the VLS villages and in other SAT areas have confirmed the importance of relations of trust, reciprocity and informal and non-official systems of exchange for technology uptake leading to agricultural growth and production enhancement.
In a nutshell, as Ryan and Spencer (2001) put it, SAT is branded by vagaries of the climate, the breadth, depth, and nature of poverty, the degrading natural resource base, poor infrastructure, neglect in national R&D priorities, and the dynamics of change in both demand and production patterns due to changes in the external environment. An important issue therefore is to understand communities in terms of ability and willingness to co-operate and work together for achieving common goals, and, sustaining and developing norms and networks for collective action. This is crucial for successful uptake, diffusion, and impact of innovations. These innovations could be in the areas of technology, institutions, or socioeconomic processes, and contribute to the evolution of livelihood diversification and new pathways to development. 84
Such is the characteristics of the two study locations where I have conducted my study. Having characterized the region, the next step for me now is to profile the two study villages which are situated in the heartland of the SAT. I have taken two villages for my study purposes one each in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra states of India, which are also a part of the larger study - the ICRISAT Village Dynamics Studies.
As can be seen from the map (Figure 4.1) showing the study villages against the backdrop of the LGP Kanzara is located in the Akola district of Maharashtra state, which comes under the Vidharbha region and Aurepalle village is in the drought prone Mahbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh state, which is part of the Telangana region. These two regions are relatively backward areas in both the states. The two villages fall under the zone where the LGP is between 75-180 days. I would like to make a point here that these two villages are part of the larger longitudinal panel study comprising 42 villages in India and Bangladesh.
4.2 Review of the region - Mahbubnagar and Akola districts, India Mahbubnagar district: Mahbubnagar is one of the districts in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, coming under the drought prone district category. The region is experiencing continuous droughts since a decade (Rao et.al, 2006, Nageswara et.al 2009). There have been many studies conducted in this region like the agroclimatic analysis and watershed research including construction of water conservation structures (Wani et.al, 2006; Prasad et.al., 1993). Droughts continue to affect this region leading to acute water scarcity and ground water table depletion (Bidinger PD, 1991).
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Figure 4.1 Map of India showing the study villages against the backdrop of LGP
This district features a traditional type of caste society with the dominant Reddy caste owning and controlling the land as well as the village governance through Gram Panchayat at present, and the traditional system called Patel-Patwari system in the past. The continuous dry spells are forcing people to migrate either seasonally or long-term for employment to Hyderabad and other areas right upto Gujarat. The region is famous for its labor migration - labor from this region are known as ‘Palamoor labor’ (Rao U, 1994, Rao VD, 2004; Badiani R, 2006; Korra V, 2010). Migrants are mostly employed in construction labor in large scale projects like dams and highways (Sainath 2003, Olsen and Murthy 1995). With opportunities for employment outside the village (initially as a push factor because of drought; now as a pull factor) increasing, as well as educational opportunities becoming readily available, there is an emergence of the OBCs in the region as an economic and political force. The reservation system in the local bodies has also assisted in this process of emergence. With the enactment of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act in 1993, it gave further scope for members from marginalized communities to enter the citadels of power and expand their political class. 86
Now the OBCs have considerable percentage of reservations and manage to get elected even in open seats.
The region is a typical agrarian setting and the economy of the district is backward and primarily agricultural, with its agriculture mainly rainfed. Out of a total geographical area of 18.47 lakh hectares, 14.13 lakh hectares is cultivable land and 2.68 lakh hectares is forest land. It has an irrigated area of only 1.47 lakh ha. This accounts for only eight percent of the total land and ten percent of the cultivable area (Sajja S, 2009). Sorghum, castor, rice, groundnut and cotton are the main crops accounting for more than seventy percent of the total cultivated area of 8.4 lakh hectares of land.
The traditional social structure in the Mahbubnagar village has altered a great deal during the decades of 1980s, 1990s and in the present decade. Basically it was a system of land based power and control where the Reddy’s held supreme authority by virtue of their land ownership, contacts and political power (Sajja S, 2009; Walker and Ryan, 1990), This domination of power was supported by the ‘Patel-Patwari’ system which was in force since the Nizam period (18-20th centuries) where members belonging to the dominant castes (Reddy, Velama and in some cases Brahmins) held positions and were the link between people and government. This dominance continued after Independence and also after the introduction of Panchayat Raj institutions in 1959. Villages in Telengana region were completely
under
the
hold
of
Reddys,
Velamas,
and
sometimes
Muslims.
Zamindari/Inamdari abolition in the 1960s brought about a few changes in the social structure and landholding pattern in the study villages. Following this abolition act in the 1960s, some of the big landlords started leaving the villages thereby resulting in transfer of power to new leaders although, these new leaders still belong to the dominant caste Reddys (Sajja S, 2009)
Improvements in education and also changes in the macro-economy enhanced the opportunities for economic growth in the villages of Telangana also. The Goud community in Mahbubnagar villages started becoming more innovative in selling toddy by transporting it to nearby towns and by the end of 1980s, they had gained a foothold in the political scene by successfully contesting against the dominant castes. During the 1990s some of the other changes that took place like outmigration of upper caste landowners resulting in sale/lease of land also resulted in significant economic changes.
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Another significant event in the Mahbubnagar villages is the introduction of borewell irrigation because of the long dry spells. The number of bore wells started increasing from 1990s, enabling farmers to grow paddy and cotton resulting in increases in income from agriculture. The continuous long dry spells and increase in the number of borewells resulted in the lowering of ground water table in this region. Farmers continued to drill new borewell and met with failures. However, the failure of borewells resulted in rising debt trap as well as decline in water table in the region. Inspite of heavy losses, farmers continued to invest in water exploration through digging of borewells, resulting in the vicious cycle of debt and poverty (Rao et al, 2006).
Another landmark achievement in this region is the successful implementation of many development programs by the government of Andhra Pradesh resulting in improvements in infrastructure, housing and sanitation facilities, employment opportunities through MNREGA, as well as access to microcredit through the formation of women-self help groups (Reddy S, 1998; Mahendra et.al, 2011). These interventions have increased the bargaining power of labor (especially through MNREGA) as well as empowerment of women through their collective actions of savings and micro-credit.
Akola district: Akola and the surrounding districts form part of what was once known as the province of Berar. An 1870 gazetteer of Berar provides a detailed account of the political and administrative history of the region but little is known about the economic history prior to the seventeenth century. Berar was initially a part of the nizamshahi 2 kingdom of Ahmednagar, later it became a part of the Moghul dominions only to revert back to the Nizamshahis. After fighting some battles, Berar was handed over to the British in 1853 to pay for various debts that have been said to be incurred by the Nizam (Taylor and Adelman, 1996). There were lot of changes that took place under each rule, but the system of land revenue determination and collection developed in Bombay Presidency was extended to Berar.
Nizam Shāhī dynasty are the succession of rulers of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar in the Deccan of India from 1490 to 1633. The founder was Malik Aḥmad, who in 1490 fixedis capital on a new site called Ahmadnagar after himself. The kingdom lay in the northwestern Deccan, between the states of Gujarat and Bijapur. It secured the great fortress of Daulatabad in 1499 and added Berar in 1574. 2
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The 1860s saw the extension of the rail line from Bombay and a surge in cotton prices and exports was noticed. Akola (also known as Cotton city) is renowned for its cotton production and is the largest cotton producing district in India. The city is also famous for its Pulse or Dal, Oil and Textile mills.
The region encompassing Akola district is predominantly rain-fed and highly commercialized agriculture in western India. The region has scarce ground water but rainfall is more stable than in other SAT regions. The soils in this region are medium to deep black soils, and the main crop is the Kharif crop.
Suitable soil and weather has made this district primarily an agro-based economy. The district is a leader in cotton production. This cash crop occupies 40% of the cultivable land. Sorghum, green gram and red gram are the kharif crops while wheat, green chickpea are the main rabi crops. Akola district leads Sorghum production within the state of Maharashtra. Oranges is the main irrigated crop along with green chillies and sugarcane. Akola has the prestigious Punjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University, the only Agricultural Research Centre and Agricultural University in the entire Vidharbha region. It was established in 1969 and named after Punjabrao Deshmukh who was the Agricultural Minister during Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s tenure as Prime Minister.
The University contributes to the agro-based economy through its research in cash crops like, wheat, red gram, cotton and oranges. Animal Husbandry, Horticulture and crop diseases are other areas of research carried out here. The Maharashtra State Seeds Corporation Ltd (Mahabeej) is headquartered at Akola. This institute which conducts research in seeds and seed development was established in April 1976. It also produces seeds for sale to farmers.
Along with agriculture, industries have also sprung up in the district providing more opportunities to people for alternate employment. Small and medium industrial estates have been established in Akola, Akot, Balashpur, Telhara and Murtijapur. A lot of business and trade is centred on cotton-based products given that cotton is the biggest cash crop in the district. Power looms, hand looms and yarn mills therefore provide employment for the people in the district on a large scale. Ginning-Pressing mills also dot the entire region. Khadi cloth is produced in Akola on a large scale. Agro-based industry has thrived here as a result
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of the agro-economy of the district. Akola and Akot talukas each have a sugar factory. Barshi-Takali has mills that produce hydrogenated oils, various pulses and oils.
This region has a capacity to absorb labor and hence outmigration of labor is relatively low compared to the other SAT regions (Badiani R, 2006). Investments in education are high in this region as well (Rao et al, 2006). However the governance in some parts of this district is not proactive leading to poor development of infrastructure in the rural areas. Several researchers have worked in this region and the topic of enquiries has mostly been on agriculture, studying the impact of high yielding varieties, Bt-cotton production, pigeonpea and their role in the diets (Bidinger PD, 1981). There have been some studies on dowry due to the increasing dowry demands. The farmer suicides are also high in this region due to the losses incurred from cotton production and this has also been a subject of study by many scholars. Some of the studies include Assadi (1998), Bhalla et al (1998), Chowdry et al (undated), Dandekar et al (2005), Deshpande (2002), Government of Andhra Pradesh (2004), Government of Maharashtra (1998), Iyer and Manick (2000), Mohan Rao (2004), Mohanty (2001, 2005), Mohanty and Shroff (2004), Parthasarathy and Shameem (1998), Purendra Prasad (2003), Revati (1998), Shambhu Prasad (1999), Shiva et al (2000), Stone (2002) and Vasavi (1999) among others. These scholars point out that this is a problem of a larger socioeconomc and agrarian distress
Table 4.1 summarizes the two regions. From the table, it can be inferred that Kanzara is in the more assured rainfall region even though variability is observed to some extent in this region (figure 4.2) compared to the other SAT regions. Agriculture is the main source of livelihood. However, too much dependency on agriculture has resulted in a larger agrarian crisis, particularly in cotton growing regions of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra in India , has precipitated a spate of suicide death among farmers (Mishra S, 2006). In Kanzara, which was predominantly a sorghum and cotton growing area, this distress was also felt. However, the introduction of sorghum HYVs in this region helped to some extent to increase the yields of this crops. An analysis of the cropping pattern from 1975 to 2010 shows that the area under sorghum as well as cotton is decreasing and soybean is being grown on a larger scale. Aurepalle on the other hand is in a more rainfall unassured region and is a more drought prone region (figure 4.3). But currently this region shows the promise of diversification of livelihood options which are both farm as well as non-farm in nature.
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The two villages – Kanzara in Akola district and Aurepalle in Mahabubnagar district - are studied by ICRISAT since 1975 and there have been a number of studies conducted in these two villages by many scholars. Both the villages have witnessed considerable changes in the agrarian structure, enterprise mix, labor market conditions and investment options over the three decades period. There was a considerable churning of households between groups of landless households, small, medium and large landholding households. Overall, land ownership and operation have become more egalitarian. Many studies have been conducted by ICRISAT in these two villages which can be accessed easily from the following website 3 However, a listing of some key research studies is given in annexure XXXX. Detailed profiles of the two villages are presented below.
Table 4.1. General description of the study regions and villages Mahbubnagar
Akola
Aurepalle village
Kanzara village
Rainfall unassured; pronounced rainfall
Rainfall assured ; increasing rainfall
uncertainty at sowing
variability
Red soil; marked soil heterogeneity
Black soils; fairly homogenous
Kharif or rainy season cropping
Kharif cropping
Bt-cotton, Paddy, castor and local Kharif
Soybean, cotton, mung bean, pigeonpea
Sorghum, vegetables; other high-value crops
and hybrid sorghum, wheat
Agricultural intensification around bore wells Limited irrigation sources in 1970s and early and tanks
1980s; canal irrigation available now to some extent
Diversification in farm and non-farm
Sustained technical change in dryland
activities
agriculture
Source: Adapted from Walker and Ryan (1990)
3
http://www.icrisat.org/vls-mip/vls_reports.htm.
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Source: IMD Datasets
Figure 4.2 Trends in annual rainfall at Akola, 1971-2007
Source: IMD Database
Figure 4.3 Trends in annual rainfall at Mahbubnagar, 1971-2007
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4.3
A brief profile of village Kanzara
Kanzara is in Murtizapur taluka (a taluka is the smallest administrative unit in a district) of Akola district and is well connected to the outside world through Murtizapur. It is in a region with scarce goundwater and no perennial rivers and little irrigation. Most of the land is single cropped. The main crop is the Kharif crop, sown in late June and early July after the arrival of the south-west monsoons. Kanzara is located in a rainfall assured area of Akola district. The district of Akola, constituting the central region of Amravati division, is situated in the state of Maharashtra and lies between 19° 51' and 21° 16' latitude and 76° 38' and 77° 44' longitude. Akola is surrounded by Amravati district in the north, Washim district in the south, Amravati and Washim districts in the east and Buldhana district in the west. There were a total of 13 tehsils in Akola district but for administrative purposes and reasons the district was divided into two districts namely, Akola and Washim on July 1, 1998. The present Akola district has seven tehsils and a geographical area of 5417 sq. km, which is 1.76% of Maharashtra State. The district headquarter is at Akola and Divisional head quarter is at Amravati. Kanzara village (77023’E; 20039’N) in Murtizapur Tehsil of Akola district is about 528 kms north of Hyderabad and can be reached via Nanded and Washim districts. The village is 10 kms to south of Murtizapur on a tarred road.
There are a total 319 households in this village and majority of them are headed by men (table 4.2). In terms of caste composition, all caste categories are more or less well represented in the village with the OBC being higher than the others. Almost half of the households are either landless or come under the marginal (those having land between 0.1 ha to less than 1 ha) land holding category (both put together are about 52%). This implies that majority of the farmers in Kanzara hold small parcels of land but productivity of the land is high, a finding well confirmed in the literature by a number of studies. An occupation wise characterization of the households from the table again clearly brings out that agriculture is the main occupation in the village, with people either working on their own farms or as labor for agriculture. Lastly the village shows good literacy levels with 64 % of the households having atleast 4-10 years of schooling.
As already stated before, the main cropping season is Kharif and crop cultivation is purely rainfed with little irrigation (figure 4.4). In terms of infrastructure, 60% of the households have concrete roof, 94% of the houses are electrified but only 45% of the households get 93
potable drinking water at their homes (table 4.3). The number of beneficiaries benefitting from different government schemes does not show a promising picture (table 4.4) implying poor governance at the local level both in getting funds sanctioned as well as implementing many of the schemes. The number of women self-help groups is also very less, an example which shows poor governance.
Table 4.2 Demographic details, Kanzara, 2010 Sl.No
Category
1
Total households
Number households 319
2
By headship Male headed
292
92
Female headed
27
8
By caste Upper Caste Other Backward Classes (OBC)
89 133
28 42
72 25
23 8
124 42 50 74 29
39 13 16 23 9
134 10 50 125 1427 489
42 3 16 39 100 34
3
4
5
6
Scheduled Caste (SC) Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Nomadic Tribe By Farm size1 Landless Marginal Small Medium Large By occupation Farming Caste occupation Non-agricultural labor Agricultural labor Literacy (no of people) illiterate (
